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A YEAR IN EUROPE. 



ayear IN Europe 



'By 



WALTER W. MOORE, D. D., LL. D. 

President of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia 



THIRD EDITION 




RICHMOND, VIRGINIA 

QIIlP Pr? Bbgtmmt Qlommitt^f of ^ubltratton 

1905 



I 






NOV 






3 q^^ 



Copyrighted 

BY 

WALTER W. MOORE, 
1904. 



Printed by 

Whittet & Shepperson, 
Richmond, Va. 



TO 

/ID^ Xlraveling Companions 

This Book is Dedicated 
as a memento 

OF HAPPY DAYS IN THE OlD WoRI.D. 



FOREWORD. 

The only excuse I have to offer for the publication 
of these desultory and chatty letters in this more per- 
manent form is that a number of my friends have 
requested it. Many of the letters have already ap- 
peared in the columns of The Children's Friend, for 
which they were originally written, at the instance of 
the Presbyterian Committee of Publication ; but I have 
included in the volume several letters which were 
written for other periodicals, and a considerable num- 
ber which have not been published anywhere till now. 
Some of them were written hastily, and, as it were, on 
the wing, others with more deliberation and care. 
Some were intended for young readers, others for older 
people. This will account for the differences of style 
and subject matter which will strike every one, and 
which will be particularly noticeable when the letters 
are read consecutively. 

In some cases I have drawn the materials, in part, 
from other sources besides my own observations, the 
main object at times being not originality, but accuracy 
and fullness of information. In such cases I have 
endeavored to make full acknowledgment of my in- 
debtedness to other writers. 

As most of the letters were written for a denomi- 
national paper, they naturally contain a good many 



vi FOREWORD. 

references to notable events in the history of the Pres- 
byterian Church, and to some of the differences be- 
tween that church and others in matters of doctrine, 
poHty and forms of worship. But I trust that in no 
case have I felt or expressed a spirit of uncharitable 
sectarianism. If any reader should receive the impres- 
sion that I have done so in one or two instances, I 
request him to suspend judgment till he has read all 
the references to such matters contained in the letters. 
It will then be seen that if I have had occasion to make 
some strictures upon the Anglican and Roman Catholic 
Churches, I have not hesitated to make them upon my 
own church also, when I have observed, in her worship 
or work, things which seemed to argue that she was 
untrue in any measure to her principles ; and that if I 
have criticised the Anglo-Catholic and Roman Catholic 
systems as erroneous, I have recognized thankfully the 
great evangelical truths embedded in the heart of 
Anglican, and even Romish theology, though so sadly 
overlaid, and have rejoiced to pay my tribute of praise 
to the saintly characters that have been developed 
within those bodies in spite of their errors. 
Richmond, Va,, June i, 1904. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 

A Cold Summer Voyage. 

A Pleasant Memory. — A Depressing Start. — Discomforts at 
Sea. — Life on a German Steamship. — The Unification of 
the World.— All's Well that Ends Well.— Arrival at 
Southampton, 9 

CHAPTER n. 

A Visit to the Town of Dr. Isaac Watts. 

A Sheltered Harbor with Double Tides. — Historical Interest 
of Southampton : Canute, William the Conqueror, Wil- 
liam Rufus, Richard Lion Heart, the Pilgrim Fathers. — 
The Chief Distinction of the Town. — Statue of Dr. 
Watts. — Sketch of the great hymn writer, i6 

CHAPTER HI. 

Salisbury, Sarum, and Stonehenge. 

A Fascinating Cathedral Town. — Rural Scenery in Southern 
England. — Impressiveness of Stonehenge. — Other Things 
of Interest About Salisbury. — What the Bishop Said 
About the Presbyterian Form of the Early Church, 21 

CHAPTER IV. 

Winchester Worthies : Alfred the Great, Izaak Walton, 
Thomas Ken. 

Memorials of Kings Good and Bad. — Memorial of the Gentle 
Fisherman. — Wit in Winchester College. — A Lovely 
Churchman. — Ken's Defiance of James II., 28 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

The Ugliness and the Charm of London. 

A Vast and Dingy Metropolis. — The -^Esthetic Value of 
Soot. — Brick versus Stone. — Scotch Cities Stately, but 
Gloomy. — Brightness of Paris. — Immensity and Multi- 
tude. — The Body is More than Raiment, 34 

CHAPTER VI. 

The English View of the Fourth of July. 

Ambassador Choate's Reception. — Increasing Friendliness 
Between America and England. — How the English Now 
View the American Revolution. — A Fair Statement of 
the Question and the Conflict. — What England Learned 
from Fighting Against Her Own Principles. — The Monu- 
ment of Washington in St. Paul's Cathedral. — The Pos- 
sible Union of Canada and the United States, ^l 

CHAPTER VII. 

How the English Regard the Americans. 

Former Prejudices Passing Away. — The English Admit that 
America Holds the Future. — English Candor and Eng- 
lish Inconsistency. — A Sectarian Measure in Parlia- 
ment. — What Scotchmen Think of the Education Bill. — 
Passive Resistance of the Nonconformists, 49 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The British Republic and the House of Commons. 

The Real Ruler of the British Empire. — The House of Par- 
liament. — Getting into the Lower House. — The Debate 
and the Debaters. — Harcourt, Bryce, Campbell-Banner- 
man, Lloyd-George, John Dillon, Arthur Balfour. — The 
Incongruity of a Presbyterian Prime Minister. — English 
and American Oratory, 55 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER IX. 

Cambridge and her Schools. 
The Cathedral Route. — The Two University Towns. — Cam- 
bridge More Progressive than Oxford. — The Presby- 
terian Element. — The Two Most Learned Women in the 
World. — Westminster College. — The Same Difficulties 
About Candidates for the Ministry, 6 j 

CHAPTER X. 
From England to Scotland — The Eastern Route. 
The Land of the Mountain and the Flood. — Melrose, Abbots- 
ford, and Dryburgh. — The Wizard of the North. — Edin- 
burgh. — Temporary Residence in Auld Reekie. — Public 
Worship in Scotland. — Organ, Choir, and Congrega- 
tion. — Bibles in the Churches, 6S 

CHAPTER XL 

Some English and Scotch Preachers. 
Dean Farrar in Westminster Abbey. — Mr. Haweis and Dr. 
Wace. — Spurgeon, Parker, and Hughes. — Moravian Mis- 
sion House. — General Booth. — Scottish Mind and Scot- 
tish Heart. — Dr. Marcus Dods. — Dr. George Matheson. — 
Dr. Whyte and Mr. Black. — Interview with Professor 
Sayce. — The Inevitable Subject, 75 

CHAPTER XII. 
Echoes of a Spicy Book on Scotland. 
A Unique Prayer for Prince Charlie. — Church-Going in 
Edinburgh. — The Bibles, the Sermons, the Prayers, the 
Music. — Jenny Geddes and her Stool. — The Disruption 
in 1843. — A Sermon-Taster with a Nippy Tongue. — Scot- 
tish and American Repartee, 87 

CHAPTER XIIL 
Is the Scottish Character Degenerating? 
"Mine Own Romantic Town." — The Seamy Side of Edin- 
burgh. — The Cause of Her Wretchedness. — Not Lack of 



X CONTENTS. 

Native Ability, nor Disregard of the Sabbath, but the 
Curse of Strong Drink. — Appalling Statistics. — A Lesser 
Menace, loo 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Stirling, the Lakes, and Glasgow. 

The Wallace Monument. — Memorials of the Martyrs. — Mar- 
garet Wilson. — The Covenanters. — The Author of "The 
Men of the Moss Hags." — Aberfoyle, The Trossachs, 
Loch Katrine, Loch Lomond. — Lord Overtoun's Garden 
Party. — Rev. John McNeill. — Scotch Humor. — Glas- 
gow. — The Cathedral. — Lord Kelvin, 107 

CHAPTER XV. 

Oban, Iona, and Staffa. 

Rude Seas off the West Coast. — A Difficult Landing. — The 
Presbyter Abbot, Columba. — The Evangelization of Scot- 
land from Iona. — The Burial Place of the Scottish 
Kings. — The Basaltic Columns of Staffa. — Fingal's 
Cave. — Nature's Cathedral. — The Caledonian Canal, .... 119 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Inverness and Memories of Flora Macdonald. 

A Clean and Comely City. — The Statue of Flora Macdon- 
ald. — The Career of a Royal Adventurer. — A Fugitive in 
the Hebrides. — A Woman to the Rescue. — Feminine 
Courage and Resource. — Flora Macdonald as Prisoner. — 
Her Marriage. — She Entertains Dr. Johnson and Bos- 
well. — Moves to North Carolina. — Misfortunes in the 
New World. — Her Return to Scotland and her Last 
Days, 124 

CHAPTER XVII. 

From Scotland to England — Western Route. 

In and Around Perth. — Quhele, Shoe Heel and Maxton. — 
Crieff and Drumtochty. — Loch Leven. — Ayr and Robert 



CONTENTS. xi 

Burns. — Dumfries, Keswick, Skiddaw. — The English 
Lakes. — Chester. — Lichfield and Dr. Samuel Johnson. — 
The Shakespeare Country. — The American Window at 
Stratford. — The English Language as Spoken in the 
Birthplace of Shakespeare and Elsewhere, 133 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

A Visit to Rugby and a Tramp to the White Horse Hill. 

Tom Brown's School Days at Rugby. — The Rugby of To- 
day. — Our Expedition to Tom Brown's Birthplace. — The 
Highest Horse we Ever Mounted. — The Roman Camp. — 
King Alfred's Defeat of the Danes. — The Manger and 
the Dragon's Hill. — The Blowing Stone. — The effect 
upon our Appetites. — The Tea we did not Drink. — Return 
to Oxford. — London Once More, 142 

CHAPTER XIX. 

The Most Interesting Building in the World. 

The Birthplace of the Shorter Catechism. — The Coronation 
Postponed. — Westminster Abbey Still Closed. — The As- 
sembly of Divines. — The Two Places of Meeting. — The 
Two Types of Worship. — Interior of the Jerusalem 
Chamber. — Exterior of the Jerusalem Chamber. — Con- 
nection of Henry IV., Sir Thomas More, Joseph Addi- 
son, and Sir Isaac Newton with the Jerusalem Cham- 
ber. — Architectural Glory of Westminster Abbey. — Its 
Historical Interest. — Coronations. — The Stone of Scone. 
— Burials. — Monuments. — Pagan Sculptures in a Chris- 
tian Church, 151 

CHAPTER XX. 

The Royal Chapels in Westminster Abbey, 

A Hard-Hearted Verger. — A Courteous Sub-Dean. — The 
Wax Effigies. — Mutilated Monuments. — Monuments De- 
nied to Notable Persons. — The Objection to Milton. — 
General Meigs and President Davis. — The Vindication 
of Cromwell. — Treatment of his Dead Body. — History of 
his Head. — His Statue at Westminster, i63 



xii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

The Cathedrals versus The Gospel. 

Original Significance of the Cathedrals. — Their Esthetic In- 
fluence. — Their Romanizing Tendency. — Their Charm for 
the Greatest of the Puritans. — A Half-Reformed Church. 
— Relics of Romanism. — Effect of Cathedrals on Pres- 
byterian Worship. — Superior Impressiveness of Protes- 
tant Simplicity, 177 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Some Things for High Churchmen to Think About. 

The Use of Written Prayers. — The Huguenot Presbyterians 
in Canterbury Cathedral. — Scuffle Between the Arch- 
bishops of Canterbury and York. — The Concomitants of 
Anglican Worship. — The Intoning. — Canon Henson at 
St. Margaret's. — His Remarks on Anglican Narrow- 
ness. — What he Could See in Virginia. — Decreasing At- 
tendance in the Anglican Churches in London. — An Epis- 
copalian Estimate of Presbyterian Preaching, 186 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

Paris and Memories of the Huguenots. 

The English Channel as a Health Resort. — The External 
Beauty of the French Capital. — What we Did Not Like 
About Paris. — The Louvre and its Treasures. — The Boer 
Generals. — The Huguenot Name and the Huguenot 
Character. — Palissy the Potter. — Other Huguenot Heroes 
and Heroines. — A Roman Catholic's Condemnation of 
Roman Catholic Persecutions. — France's Loss the 
World's Gain. — What we Owe to the Huguenots. — The 
Huguenot Strain in Virginia. — The Present Huguenot 
Revival in France. — Brussels and Waterloo, 199 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

The Making of Holland. 

Unique Interest of Holland. — A Land Below Sea-Level. — 
Water as an Enemy. — Dykes as Protectors. — How Dykes 



CONTENTS. xiii 

are Made. — Sand Dunes. — Canals. — Wind-Mills. — 
Polders. — Entering Holland. — The Scenery and the 
Scenes. — Rotterdam and Erasmus. — Delft and William 
the Silent. — The Hague. — Rembrandt's "School of Anat- 
omy." — A Presbyterian Queen. — A Presbyterian Preacher 
as Prime Minister. — Unpresbyterian Church Buildings. — 
Would the Destruction of all the Cathedrals have been a 
Loss or a Gain ? 212 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Leyden's University, Haarlem's Flowers, and Amster- 
dam's Commerce. 

The Great Siege. — A University as a Revi'ard of Valor. — John 
Robinson and the Pilgrim Fathers. — Horse Flesh as 
Food. — Haarlem and the Flower Boom. — Amsterdam's 
Islands and Canals. — A City Built on Stakes. — Business 
of Amsterdam. — President Kruger at Utrecht. — Queer 
Customs in Holland. — The Dutch Mania for Cleanli- 
ness. — Mr. Edward Bok on "The Mother of America,". . 222 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

Up the Rhine and Over the Alps. 

Cologne and Coblentz. — The Vintage of the Rhine Valley. — 
Wiesbaden and the German Woods. — The Luther Monu- 
ment at Worms. — Wintry Weather at Heidelberg. — 
Strasburg's Cathedral and Clock. — Switzerland in Win- 
ter-time. — The Lion of Lucerne. — A Cold Day on the 
Lake. — Over the Alps. — Snow in Italy. — Milan, 238 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Venice, Bologna, Florence, and Pisa. 

The Queen of the Adriatic. — The Fallen Campanile. — Fra 
Paolo Sarpi, the Greatest of the Venetians. — Busy Bo- 
logna. — The Leaning Towers. — 'The Colonnades. — The 
Oldest University. — Galvani and his Frog. — The Flower 
of Fair Cities. — Art Treasures of Florence. — The Re- 
former Before the Reformation. — Martyrdom of Savona- 
rola. — Pisa's Four Monuments, 245 



xlv CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
Some Little Adventures by the Way. 
Letter- Writing Under Difficulties. — An Exemplary Traveller. 
— A Mild Sensation in Leyden. — A German Baby-Cart 
out of its Element. — Something New in Venice. — No 
Place for Wheels. — Gondolas and Gondoliers. — Wonder- 
ful Dexterity with a Single Oar.— A Scattering of Bag- 
gage on the Streets of Cologne. — Disastrous Descent of 
a Baby-Cart from the Top of an Omnibus.— Extortion 
and Fraud in Sacred Places, 254 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

Relics in General and the Iron Crown of Lombardy in 
Particular. 

Mark Twain's Animadversions. — The Palladium of Venice. — 
The Gift of Leo Xlll. to London.— The Blood of St. 
Januarius. — The House of the Virgin at Loreto. — The 
Wonder- Working Bones of St. Anne in Canada. — The 
Iron Crown of Lombardy. — A Winter Trip to Monza. — 
The Treasury of the Cathedral. — The Chapel of the Great 
Relic. — Why the Crown is so Sacred. — How it was used 
by Charlemagne and Napoleon. — Rome Caps the Cli- 
max. — Do American Roman Catholics Believe in the 
Relics ? 259 

CHAPTER XXX. 

Roman Catholic Relics at Rome. 

The Miraculous Snow in Summer-time. — The Holy Cradle. — 
The Little Doll that Owns a Large Carriage. — The 
Wealth and Power of the Miraculous Bambino. — The 
Communion Table Used by Christ. — The Holy Stairs 
from Pilate's Palace. — The Man who Crawled Up and 
Walked Down. — The Miraculous Portrait and the Shoes 
of Christ. — The Inscription on the Cross and the Finger 
of Thomas. — A Bottle of the Blood of Christ. — Exclusion 
of Women from Holy Places. — The Hardness of St. 
Peter's Knees. — The Hardness of St. Peter's Head. — 



CONTENTS. XV 

What the Head of St. Paul Did.— St. Paul's Use of Plau- 
tilla's Veil. — The Footprints of Christ in Stone. — The 
Chains of St. Peter.— The Column Against which Christ 
Leaned in the Temple.— The Chair of St. Peter.— The 
Lance that Pierced the Saviour's Side. — The Napkin of 
St. Veronica with the Miraculous Impression of our 
Lord's Face.— The Head of the Apostle Andrew, 273 

CHAPTER XXXL 
The Legends, The Popes, and the Pasquinades. 
The Manufacture of St. Philomena. — The Canonization of 
Buddha. — The Courteous Spaniard. — The Miracles of St. 
Dominic. — Miracles Wrought by Other Saints and 
Images. — How the Papal Treasury was Filled, and How 
it was Emptied. — Some Ugly Passages in Papal His- 
tory. — Pasquino's View of the Pope. — What the Italians 
Now Think About it. — Few Men and Many Women at 
the Confessional. — Lord Macaulay, Charles Dickens, Mr. 
Gladstone, Mr. McCarthy and Nathaniel Hawthorne on 
the Influence of Romanism. — The New Pope a Good 
Man, 293 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

The Old Forces and the New in the Eternal City. 

An Audience with the Pope. — "Long Live the Pope-King!" 
The Pope's Last Jubilee in St. Peter's. — Our Quarters on 
the Pincian Hill. — The Sweep of History Seen from the 
Janiculum. — The Colosseum and the Baths of Caracalla. — 
The Papal Passion for Terrestrial Immortality. — The 
Building Boom Under the New Government. — Can the 
New Government Maintain Itself Against the Priests?.. 315 

CHAPTER XXXIIL 

The Two Types of Religion in Rome. 

The Cappucin Cemetery. — Some Differences Between America 
and Italy. — The Playful Inquisition. — The Relative Rank 
of the Deities Worshipped in Rome. — The Fee of the 



xvi CONTENTS. 

Visitor More Important than the Soul of the Wor- 
shipper. — Sensuality versus Spirituality in Art. — The 
Kind of Character Produced. — The Other Type. — An 
Apostolic Preacher in Rome. — A Wise and Loving 
Pastor, 328 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

The Inexhaustibleness of Rome. 

The Most Interesting City in the World. — The Embarrass- 
ment of Riches. — Boundless Wealth of Materials. — The 
Appian Way, the Catacombs, the Ecclesiastical Statues. — 
The Remains of Classical Rome : The Arches, the 
Columns, the Tombs, the Statues. — The Masterpieces of 
Sculpture and the Masterpieces of Painting in Rome. — 
The Best Books About Rome. — Lord Mahon and Pro- 
fessor Lanciani on the Last of the Stuarts. — Ave Roma 
Immortalis, 341 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

Naples, Capri, Vesuvius, Amalfi, and Pompeii. 

Beauty and Filth. — Danger and Indifference. — Street Scenes 
in Naples. — The Blue Grotto of Capri. — The Ascent of 
Vesuvius. — A Stream of Liquid Fire. — Hard Climbing 
Through Cinders. — Driven Back from the Crater by 
Sulphur Fumes — The Most Beautiful Drive in the 
World. — The Loveliness of Amalfi. — The Ruins of Pom- 
peii. — Story of the Catastrophe. — The Work of Exhuma- 
tion. — The Return Voyage by Gibraltar and the Azores. — 
There is no Place Like Home, 346 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

/ 

Westminster Abbey and Jerusalem Chamber, Frontispiece. 

The House of Parliament, London, 56 

Clare College and King's Chapel, Cambridge, 62 

Sir Walter Scott's Seat in Melrose Abbey, 69 

Drill of Highlanders, Edinburgh Castle, 88 ' 

Princes Street, Edinburgh, loi ' 

Monument to Margaret Wilson, Stirling, 108 ' 

Statue of Flora Macdonald, Inverness, 125 ^ 

Magdalen College, Oxford, 150 '' 

Poets Corner, Westminster Abbey, 164 ' 

A Stranger in Leyden, 222 

The Lion of Lucerne, 242 

The Doge's Palace, Venice, 246 

The Bambino, 276 - 

Scala Santa, Rome, 279 

Kings of England and Italy in Rome, 319 ^ 

Panorama of Naples, 346 -^ 

A Windy Day on Mount Vesuvius, 350 "^ 

On the Road to Amalfi, 352 -^ 

Colonnade of Hotel Cappucini, 354 ^ 

Pompeii, 357 _/ 



A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

CHAPTER I. 

A Cold Summer Voyage. 

Southampton, England, June 28, 1902. 

AN American traveller says that a sea voyage, com- 
pared with land travel, is a good deal like matrimony 
compared with single blessedness : either decidedly better 
A Pleasant ^^ decidedly worse. With me, on my first 

Memory. voyagc to Europc a few years ago, it was, 
like my own venture in matrimony, decidedly better. We 
sailed from New York on a brilliant day, and nearly all 
the way over the weather was bright, bracing, buoyant, 
with blue sky above, blue sea beneath, and just enough 
motion of the water to give it all the fascination of chang- 
ing beauty. Only once or twice did even our least sea- 
soned passengers need "some visible means of support," 
on account of the rolling of the ship, and when we struck 
the Gulf Stream, deep blue and warm, it was pleasant on 
deck even without wraps, and I remember the captain's 
telling me he had seen the temperature of the water 
change thirty-one degrees in two minutes, when he would 
pass from the Gulf Stream into a colder current, though 
we ourselves had no such experience then. Day after day 
we lounged on deck restfully, or walked about comfort- 
ably, taking deep and leisurely inhalations of the pure 
ocean air, and having frequent opportunity to learn the 
meaning of "Cat's Paw" as applied to winds, when, under 
the gentle dips of air, the placid ocean took on a pitted 



10 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

appearance exactly like the tracks made by cats' feet in 
soft snow. 

A De ressing ^^^ present voyagc has been very different, 
start. and I fear that some of the young people 

with me, who are familiar with my impressions of the 
former passage, have felt some disappointment with the 
ocean. The circumstances of our start were depressing, 
notwithsitanding the animation of the scene at the North 
German Lloyd Pier, with its throng of carriages, baggage 
wagons, trucks, trunks, tourists' agents, passengers, and 
friends who had come to see them off, and who waved 
their handkerchiefs and shouted farewells and sang Ger- 
man songs, while the band on the Bremen played inspiring 
airs, and her own hoarse whistles capped the climax of 
the din, as the tugs pulled the great ship out into the 
river, and turned her prow towards the ocean, and her 
ponderous engines began to throb. It was all in vain. 
Nothing could make it seem cheerful. The rain was 
pouring steadily and heavily from leaden skies, and just 
outside the harbor we ran into an opaque fog that 
shrouded all the beauty of the sea, and made it necessary 
for the fog horn to sound its prolonged, mournful, omi- 
nous, and nerve-racking blast every minute through the 
rest of the day and night, to avoid collision with other 
vessels groping through the deep. It was a comfoft to 
recall the hymn we had used in the family circle the 
morning we started from home — 

Let the sweet hope that thou art mine 
My life and death attend, 
Thy presence through my journey shine 
And crown my journey's end" — 

and to commit ourselves to the care of him who hath 
measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and to 



A COLD SUMMER VOYAGE. ii 

whom the darkness and the hght are both ahke, and to 
whom the night shineth as the day. 

Discomforts ^^^ sevcral days the sea was "a gray and 
at Sea. melancholy waste," and, when at length the 

weather cleared, a cold wind — very cold and cutting 
and persistent — blew hard from the northwest, making 
our side of the deck intolerable, even with our heaviest 
winter clothing and a great profusion of wraps, so that it 
was hardly a surprise to us, when about half way over, 
to see in the distance what we took to be an iceberg 
glistening cold against the horizon — very interesting, of 
course, as compared with the steamships, sailing vessels, 
and schools of porpoises, which are the usual variations 
of the monotony of the waterscape — but also very uncom- 
fortable. Moreover, the wind made the sea so rough at 
times that the tables in the dining saloon were more than 
once quite "sparsely settled," not a few people "wanted 
the earth," and longed for terra Urnia — less terror and 
more firmer, as a friend of mine once put it. One or two 
even of our own party, who, though good "tar heels," are 
not equally good "tars," paid reluctant tribute to Neptune. 
Reluctant, did I say ? Yet it was done eagerly, as though 
the persons in question "could not contain themselves" 
for joy, or novelty, or some other emotion. I find it 
difficult to write of this curious little malady, which 
baffles the skill of all physicians, with sufficient plainness, 
and, at the same time, with sufficient reserve. The most 
delicate reference to it on record was that of a French- 
man, who, pale and miserable, was greeted by a blooming 
Englishman with "Good morning, monsieur, have you 
breakfasted?" and replied, "No, monsieur, I have not 
breakfasted. On the contrary." Three or four of our 
immediate party, however, did not miss a meal on the 
whole voyage, but "held their own" throughout, and were 



12 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

able to "navigate" every day. Moreover, wliile the rude 
seas robbed us of the exhilaration which I had always 
heretofore associated with an ocean voyage, we had on 
board many bright and attractive things which went far 
to counterbalance the effect of the chilly and depressing 
weather. 

Life on a German The Bremen is a staunch and comfortable 
steamship. ship; uot ouc of the Atlantic greyhounds, 
which are built slender and comparatively light in order 
to great speed — but all the better for that, as her vast bulk 
and heavy cargo give her a degree of steadiness unknown 
to the express steamers, and her appointments are in 
every way equal to those of the fastest ships afloat. She 
takes nine days for the trip from New York to Southamp- 
ton, and in ordinary weather that is none too long for the 
average passenger. It was no fault of hers that our 
journey was not a comfortable one throughout. It could 
not have been so in any ship with such weather as we had 
the misfor*tune to encounter. Of course, everything on 
board is German. The stewards can speak enough Eng- 
lish for all necessary purposes, though one of them, when 
asked a question by a member of our party, made the 
naive reply, "I do not hear well in English." One is soon 
initiated into the mysteries of marks and pfennigs, and 
begins to pick up sundry guttural German words and 
phrases. Being German, of course the ship has plenty of 
music, a cornet band discoursing lively airs on deck about 
the middle of every forenoon, and a string band playing 
during the dinner hour in the saloon, while the passengers 
munch in unison. The catering department is organized 
on the assumpition that the chief occupation of people on 
shipboard is eating, sandwiches and hot beef tea being 
served on deck in the forenoon, and tea and biscuits of 
various kinds in the afternoon, in addition to the three 



A COLD SUMMER VOYAGE. 13 

very elaborate set meals in the saloon, the lavish abund- 
ance of which is provoking to the squeamish passenger. 
A Teutonic bugler, with fully developed lungs, gives the 
signals for the meals. On Sunday morning the passen- 
gers are wakened by the strains of Luther's "Ein feste 
burg ist unser Gott." The management of the ship 
throughout is characterized by German thoroughness, and 
the organization and discipline are perfect. 

Shuffle board, ring pitching, and other deck games, 
and letter-writing, chess, and other amusements indoors, 
more or less innocent, serve to while away part of the 
time. Ordinarily, reading is my main resource in this 
way, but the cold weather and searching draughts, making 
it impossible to find a reasonably comfortable spot to sit 
down in with a book, reduced my reading on tliis trip to a 
minimum. 

The Unification Various nationalities were represented in 
of the World, our ship's compauy, the Anglo-Saxon pre- 
dominating. This reminds me of the fact that the ocean 
has played no small part in the unification of the world as 
thus far accomplished. Nothing, perhaps, distinguishes 
the modern world more sharply from the ancient than its 
views of the ocean. To the ancients the sea was a mystery 
and a terror ; it was a barrier, it separated men. To the 
moderns the sea is a highway, a means of communication, 
it unites men. The nearest approach to a unification of 
the race in ancient times was effected by the law of the 
Roman and the language of the Greek. The unifying 
force to-day is the Anglo-Saxon, who to the genius of the 
Roman for conquest and government, and to the genius 
of the Greek for letters and art, has added the genius of 
the Phoenician for commerce and the genius of the He- 
brew for religion. Here we touch the secret of his ascen- 
dancy. The Anglo-Saxon civilization is Christian. His 



14 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

language is becoming the universal language. His insti- 
tutions are becoming the universal institutions. His 
ships carry the passengers and produce of the world. 
His capital dominates commerce. London is the 
clearing-house of the world. Will this unification con- 
tinue? Will it endure? It will if the religion to which 
the Anglo-Saxon owes his preeminence remains preemi- 
nent in his civilization. The brdtherhood of man — how 
else shall it ever be fully and permanently brought about, 
except through men's knowledge of the Fatherhood of 
God? And how can the Fatherhood of God ever be 
known except through him who taught us to say, "Our 
Father," and of whom the Father said, "This is my be- 
loved Son in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him?" 
It is no accident that the nations which have most rever- 
ently heeded this divine command, the nations w'hich are 
most truly Christian, are the nations which have hitherto 
stood in the forefront of the foremost civilizations of man- 
kind, and are the nations which now hold the future. 

"Jesus shall reign where'er the sun 
Does his successive journeys run, 
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore 
Till moons shall wax and wane no more." 

The force which will bind all men in a real and per- 
manent union is no mere knowledge of navigation, nor is 
it Anglo-Saxon commerce, laws, or language; it is the 
Christian religion. 

Aivs Well That ^^^ latter part of our voyage was less try- 
Ends Well, ing than the earlier, and the days were gen- 
erally brighter, thougli still cold. Yet all were glad when 
one night, about nine o'clock, the intermittent gleam of 
the lighthouse on the Scilly Islands came into view, assur- 
ing us that the voyage would soon be ended. Next morn- 



A COLD SUMMER VOYAGE. 15 

ing we were steaming along the picturesque south coast 
of England, with the white chalk cHffs and velvety green 
downs in plain view through the tender blue haze, the 
water was quieter and the weather warmer, and in a few 
hours more we entered The Solent, passing on our right, 
almost within a stone's throw, "The Needles," three white, 
pointed rocks of chalk, at the western extremity of the 
Isle of Wig*ht, which rest on dark colored bases and spring 
abruptly from the sea to a height of a hundred feet, and 
which are in striking contrast with the vertically striped 
cliffs of red, yellow, green, and grey sandstone behind 
them. 

At last the great engines cease their throbbing for the 
first time in nine days, the tender comes alongside for 
the passengers bound for Great Britain, and in another 
half hour we set foot on the soil of England, in the ancient 
city of Southampton. 



CHAPTER II. 
A Visit to the Town of Dr. Isaac Watts. 

Southampton, England, June 28, 1902. 

SOUTHAMPTON, the ancient seaport at Which travel- 
lers to Europe by the steamships of the North Ger- 
man Lloyd line first set foot on British soil, is a place of 
considerable interest at any time, but was especially attrac- 
tive to us after a cold and uncomfortable voyage across 
the Atlantic. The day of our arrival was fine, with blue 
sky and genial sunshine, the water of the Solent, between 
the Isle of Wig*ht and the mainland, was free from the 
ocean swell, and Southampton Water was quieter still, so 
we landed with thankful hearts and rising spirits. The 
city, which is a place of some 70,000 inhabitants, owes its 
importance to its sheltered harbor and to the phenomenon 
of double tides, which prolong high water for two hours. 
„. ^ . , This mention of the tides reminds me to say 

Historical -^ 

Interest of that Southampton is the place where Canute 

Southampton. ^^^ j^^^^ jg g^j^ ^^ ^^^^ ^-^^^^ j^jg famous 

rebuke to his flattering courtiers. All the children who 
have read any English 'history will recall the story. 

They are familiar, too, with the hard-hearted action 
of William the Conqueror in laying waste an area of one 
hundred and forty square miles in this neighborhood for 
the purpose of making a hunting ground, which has ever 
since been known as the New Forest, and which still 
stretches westward from Southampton Water. It will 
be remembered that the Conqueror's son and successor, 
William Rufus, met his death here, being found one day 
in these woods with an arrow throug-h his heart. That 



THE TOWN OF DR. ISAAC WATTS. 17 

arrow may have been shot by one of the many peasants 
who had been driven from their homes when the New 
Forest was made, though most writers attribute the deed, 
without sufficient proof, to a gentleman named Walter 
Tyrrell. At any rate, here William Rufus was killed, and 
at Winchester, thirteen miles from Southampton, he was 
buried under the floor of the cathedral, "many looking on 
and few grieving," as the old chronicler says. 

Of still more interest to young readers, especially boys, 
who are familiar with Sir Walter Scott's stories, The 
Talisman and Ivanhoe, is the fact 'that the Crusaders 
under Richard the Lion Hearted, sailed from Southamp- 
ton for the Holy Land. That was in 1189. 

In the summer of 1620, however, a far more important 
expedition, though far less spectacular, was fitted out at 
Southampton by the hiring of a ship here called the May- 
■flower, in which shortly afterwards the Pilgrim Fathers 
sailed for fhe New World. 

It will be seen, then, that Southampton is a place of no 
small historical interest, to say nothing of its associations 
with Edward III., Henry V., and Charles I., or its being 
the birthplace of Sir John E. Millais, the artist, or of its 
having fine statues of Lord Palmerston and "Chinese" 
Gordon. 

Chief Distinction ^^t it was not ou accouut of any of these 
of the Town. things that we deitermined to give to this 
place the first few hours we were to spend in England. 
The special reason for our interest in Southampton is that 
it was the birthplace and residence of the greatest hymn 
writer that ever lived, a man of totally different physique, 
character, gifts, and influence from the able, but bloody 
kings with whose names the earlier history of the place 
is associated, a small, delicate, scholarly. Christian man, 
of lovely spirit, who, by exactly antipodal methods, has 



i8 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

established a wider, more real, more beneficent, and more 
lasting reign over human hearts than William or Richard 
were able to achieve — the Rev. Isaac Watts, D. D., 
whose simpler pieces for children have become household 
words throughout the English-speaking world, such as, 
"Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber," "Let dogs delight 
to bark and bite," "How doth the little busy bee improve 
each shining hour," etc., and who, as even a supercilious 
and grudging critic like Matthew Arnold admitted, wrote 
the finest hymn in the English language, "When I survey 
the wondrous cross," and very many others of scarcely 
inferior merit. 

He was the author of various able treatises on phil- 
osophy and theology, but it was the thought of what he 
had done for the world by his hymns that caused us to 
stop at Southampton. So, mounting the winding stair- 
way 'to the top of the "double-decker" electric tram car, 
much better adapted to sight-seeing than our single-story 
street cars in America, we were carried smoothly and 
quickly up the bright and busy High Street, gaily deco- 
rated for the Coronation, and in a few minutes passed 
under the great stone arch of the Bar Gate, the most 
interesting portion of the ancient city wall. The modern 
city, of course, stretches far beyond the walls, street after 
street of clean and attractive houses, with a profusion of 
brilliant flowers and neatly trimmed greenery, shut in 
from the street, in many cases, by high stone walls, over 
which, however, we can easily see from our elevated 
position. 

Presently, in the centre of a small park, which opens 
on the left with velvety grass and fine trees, we see the 
object of our search, a marble statue of a very small and 
wizened man, of benevolent face and venerable appear- 
ance, with a Bible in his hand, and on the pedestal in bold 



THE TOWN OF DR. ISAAC WATTS. 19 
„, ^ , ^ letters the name, "Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D." 

Sketch of the ' ' 

Great Hymn- He WES born in 1674, was devoted to books 
Writer. froHi his infancy, and began to learn Latin 

when four years old. Afterwards, as a youth he became 
so proficient at school that friends proposed to provide 
for his support at the university (he was the eldest of nine 
children, and the family, while not indigent, was not rich), 
but he declined the offer because he could not conscien- 
tiously belong to the Church of England. He cast in his 
lot with the Dissenters, and became one of 'the promoters 
of that mighty and beneficent force in English religious 
and political life known as "the Nonconformist Con- 
science." That his education did not suffer from the 
dhoice he 'then made is clear from his later work. Dr. 
Samuel Johnson, who was a stiff Churchman, with no 
love for Dissenters in general, is constrained, in his work 
on English Poets, to pay a warm tribute to Dr. Watts' 
remarkable attainments, and says it was with great pro- 
priety that in 1728 he received from Edinburgh and 
Aberdeen an unsolicited diploma, by which he became a 
doctor of divinity. Dr. Johnson adds a remark, which is 
commended to the earnest attention of American colleges, 
which have done so much to bring honorary degrees into 
contempt by their promiscuous bestowment, "Academical 
honors would have more value, if they were always be- 
stowed with equal judgment." He says further that Dr. 
Watts was one of the first authors that taught the Dissen- 
ters to court attention by the graces of language. "What- 
ever they had among them before, whether of learning or 
acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarse- 
ness and inelegance of style. Ele showed them that zeal 
and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished 
diction." 

Of his talents in general the same discriminating 



20 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

writer says that "perhaps there was nothing in which he 
would not have excelled if he had not divided his pOAvers 
to different pursuits," and of his character, that he ad- 
mired Dr. Watts' meekness of opposition and mildness of 
censure in theological discussion (qualities which no one 
could attribute to Dr. Johnson himself), and that it was 
not only in his book, but in his mind, that orthodoxy was 
united with charity. Dr. Johnson concludes his appre- 
ciation of him with this remark, "Happy will be that 
reader w'hose mind is disposed, by his verses or his prose, 
to imitate him in all but his nonconformity," which shows 
both his exalted estimate of the man and his amusing 
dislike of the Dissenter. But in nothing was the greatness 
of Dr. Watts' character more clearly shown than in his 
nonconformity ; and his countrymen have continued to 
take his view of that matter in ever-increasing numbers, 
so that now more than half of the English people are non- 
conformists. But of that I shall have something to say at 
another time. 



CHAPTER III. 
Salisbury, Sarum, and Stonehenge. 

Salisbury, June 30, 1902. 

FOR one Who visits England as a student of history 
there is hardly a better starting point than South- 
ampton, as the most impressive of the Druidical and 
Roman remains in Great Britain are less than forty miles 
away, the capital city of Alfred the Great is only twelve 
miles distant, the whole surrounding region is closely 
associated with the Saxon, Danish, Norman and Plan- 
tagenet kings, and two of the most interesting cathedrals 
in England are within easy reach by rail. One of these 
cathedral towns, Salisbury, we selected as a suitable place 
in which to spend quietly our fifst Sunday in the Old 
World, having landed at Southampton Saturday after- 
noon. So, after we had given a few hours to the principal 
sights of Southampton, we took a train for Salisbury, 
twenty-nine miles distant, and, after a short and delightful 
journey through the tranquil rural scenery, which is char- 
acteristic of Southern England, reached our destination 
refreshed rather than wearied by our experiences since 
leaving the ship. 

We recognized the place, even before our 

A Fascinating ^ ^ 

Cathedral train Stopped, by the cathedral spire, which 
'^°'^"- is 406 feet high, the loftiest in England, and 

which dominates all views of the town. This richly 
adorned spire is one of three things which entitles this 
cathedral to special attention, the other two being, first, its 
lovely close, unsurpassed in size and beauty, a glorious 
expanse of velvety sward, shaded by lofty trees ; and 



22 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

secondly, the uniformity and harmony of its architecture, 
making it the most symmetrical and graceful of all Eng- 
lish cathedrals. The interior is less interesting, having 
no wealth of monuments like Winchester, Westminster, 
and St. Paul's, and no profusion of stained glass windows 
like York. 

On Sunday we attended service in the cathedral, and 
found it formal, cold and unsatisfying. I yield to no man 
in my admiration of the beauty of these vast and venerable 
catliedrals, but they have been in some respects a hin- 
drance to vital religion, as I shall endeavor to show in a 
later letter. This one at Salisbury was erected in the 
middle of the thirteenth century, so that for six hundred 
and fifty years it has been used continuously as a place of 
Christian worship, first Romish and now Anglican. 

But on Monday we made an excursion which took us 
back to a still more remote antiquity. One mile to the 
north of Salisbury at Old Sarum (a name well known to 
students of English politics as that of the "rotten bor- 
ough," which till 1832 had the privilege of sending two 
members to Parliament, though without a single inhabi- 
tant), crowning a great hill which commands the sur- 
rounding country for miles, stands the vast, grass-clad 
earthworks of an ancient Roman fortress, the largest 
entrenched camp in the kingdom. That is old, but we are 
bound for something older still, and so we continue our 
drive northwards. 

One great charm of the summer in Great Britain is the 
cool weather. The English people never have to endure 
the withering heats to which we are subjected in 
America. This year it has been much cooler even than 
usual. So, as we drive on through the June day, although 
the sun is shining brightly, the air is bracing and exhilar- 
ating. 



SALISBURY, SARUM, STONEHENGE. 23 
Another marked difference between this 

Rural Scenery 

in Southern country and most parts of ours is the extra- 
Engiand. ordinary finish of the landscape, due to 
scantiness of forests, absence of undergrowth, thorough- 
nes of tillage, and especially the luxuriance and smooth- 
ness of the turf. The quiet beauty of rural England has a 
perpetual charm. When I was here some years ago it was 
May, the hawthorn hedges were in bloom, and the whole 
country was robed in tender green. Before landing this 
time I felt some regret that we should not see it in the 
same lovely attire, thinking of the difference between 
early May and late June in America. But I find it even 
more beautiful than when I first saw it. The farmers 
were cutting the lush grass in some places, impregnating 
the air with the delicious fragrance of new-mown hay. 
In other fields the wheat was standing thick, with here 
and there a blaze of scarlet poppies, sometimes an acre 
or two in extent, a solid mass of brilliant red, no green or 
other color visible at all. Still prettier, if possible, are the 
scattered poppy blooms in a field of half ripe grain, look- 
ing like ruby bubbles on a gently moving, sun-lit sea. 

The youngsters in our party are interested to see 
horses hitched tandem to the wide hay wains in the fields, 
and to observe that when we meet a double team in the 
road, instead of being harnessed as two horses are with 
us, on each side of a tongue, 'here each of the two horses 
is in his own pair of shafts. Nor are they slow to observe 
that teams always turn to the left in passing each other, 
instead of to the right as with us, and the same rule is 
observed in the running of trains on a double track rail- 
way. 

No frame houses are to be seen in town or country. 
We have not seen a wooden house since we landed. All 
are of brick or stone, though many of them in the country 



24 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

are covered with thatch, sometimes with clay tiles. But 
slate is more and more superseding these old-fashioned 
materials. This does not promote the cottager's comfort. 
Slate roofs are hotter in summer and colder in winter than 
those of straw, and, of course, too, they are far less pic- 
turesque. I observe that many farmers thatch, even their 
stone and brick fences to prevent the water from coming 
in and freezing, to the injury of the masonry. No wooden 
fences are seen, and few of wire. They are either living 
hedges of thorn or privet or the like, or they are walls of 
s'tone or brick. In short, the improvements look more 
substantial than ours, the agricultural methods more 
thorough, the country more finished, and, I should think, 
more comfortable to live in, in the material sense. Very 
striking is the universal love of flowers. Every little 
village yard, if but three or four feet wide, and every 
cottage window, however humble, has its rows of brilliant 
geraniums, and other ornamental plants, 
impressiveness And uow, after a drive of nine miles, we 
ofstonehenge. reach Salisbury Plain, a name familiar to 
me from early boyhood from the title of a little book that 
used to be read in many homes, The Shepherd of Salis- 
bury Plain. As we came up, sure enough, there was a 
shepherd on one of the green slopes, with his flock and his 
shepherd dog. We give them but a glance, however, for 
our attention is instantly claimed by the object which we 
have come so far to see, Stonehenge, "the most imposing 
megalolithic monument in Britain," a group of great 
stones which seem originally to have been arranged in 
tv/c concentric circles enclosing two ellipses, but some are 
tiow fallen. Of the outer circle, which was one hundred 
feer in diameter, seventeen stones are still standing, with 
six of the great cap-stones over them. The largest up- 
rights of the whole group, those near the centre of the 



SALISBURY, SARUM, STONEHENGE. 25 

circle, were twenty-two and a half feet high, and the 
transverse blocks were three and a half feet thick. These 
are, therefore, quite large stones, but it is not their size 
that gives them their interest. The ancient Egyptians 
handled much larger stones than these. It is their an- 
tiquity, and the mystery, still unsolved, as to the purpose 
for which they were erected. Were they placed here by 
the Druids? If so, for what purpose? The name does 
not help us, Stonehenge being but a corruption of the 
Saxon name, meaning "hanging stones." Were they in- 
tended for a temple of the sun, or a calendar in stone for 
the measurement of the solar year, or a huge gallows on 
which defeated enemies were hung in honor of Woden, 
or a sepulchral circle connected with the burial of the 
dead? No positive answer can be given, but the last 
mentioned view is now regarded as the most probable, 
and is confirmed by the existence in the immediate vicinity 
of great turf-covered barrows, or burial places. These 
barrows are of the Bronze Age, and to this same remote 
period Stonehenge itself is referred by the best authori- 
ties. 

The present owner of Salisbury Plain has recently 
enclosed Stonehenge with a wire fence and charges an 
admission fee of a shilling. The public resents this in the 
case of a unique and world-renowned monument, which 
for ages has stood in the open, freely accessible to all, and 
there was not a little satisfaction at finding that, as a sort 
of road ran along within a few feet of it, and as the 
closing or moving of this thoroughfare could not be per- 
mitted by the county authorities, the fence in question 
had to run so close to the famous cromlech, after all, that 
the proposed exclusion of the public without payment of a 
fee has amounted to very little. Visitors can come so 
near, and can get so good a view of all that is to 
3 



26 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

be seen that but few pay the fee and go inside the en- 
closure. 

We return to SaHsbury by a different road, 

Other Things of 

Interest about vvhich takcs US for miles through the mea- 
saiisbury. dows of cue of those "swcct and fishful 

rivers," which add so much to the quiet charm of the 
scenery, placid and clear, flowing softly not only between 
grassy banks but over grassy beds, the grass growing 
luxuriantly from the bottom, and being cut from the 
stream by the hay harvesters, as though it were on the 
open meadow. 

On reaching the town, I went to the Market Square 
to see the bronze statue of a man for whom I had always 
felt respect and admiration since studying his work on 
Political Economy when I was a student in college, Mr. 
Fawcett, a talented native of this place, who, though he 
had the misfortune to lose his sig'ht early in life, by the 
accidental discharge of a gun in the hands of his own 
father, nevertheless became a student, a professor, an 
author, a man of affairs, a member of Parliament, and 
Postmaster-General of Great Britain — a fine example of 
the triumph of character and will over grievous limita- 
tions. 

It added to the interest of our visit to Salisbury, and 
especially of our walk through the lovely grounds of the 
Bishop's Palace, to see this dignitary of the Church of 
England in his clerical garb, with apron, knee breeches, 
and all, except that he was bareheaded, romping de- 
lightedly on the lawn with a little girl, probably his grand- 
daughter, and to recollect that the Bishop of Salis- 
bury, after bringing the wealth of his undoubted scholar- 
ship to his recent book, The Ministry of Grace, had de- 
clared, like Dean Stanley, Bishop Lightfoot and Dean 
Milman, that "throughout the early church, even at Rome, 



SALISBURY, SARUM, STONEHENGE. 27 

and Alexandria, down to the third century, the govern- 
ment of the church was Presbyterian," thus going even 
farther than Stanley, who says that "nothing like modern 
Episcopacy existed before the beginning of the second 
century," 

It interested us also to recall that Addison, Fielding, 
and Bishop Burnet had resided here. So, considering 
these things, and those above mentioned, we all left Salis- 
bury reluctantly, declaring with one accord that it was an 
exceedingly interesting place, and wondering whether 
even Winchester could equal it. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Winchester Worthies: Alfred the Great, Izaak 
Walton, and Thomas Ken. 

Winchester, July 2, 1902. 

UNQUESTIONABLY the most interesting town in 
the south of England to a student of history is 
Winchester. It was the ancient capital of the kingdom, 
Memorials of Kings, ^^'^ tecms with mcmones of Alfred the 
Good and Bad. Great, Canute, William the Conqueror, 
and many of their successors. Thorney croft's fine bronze 
statue of Alfred s'tands in the middle of the High Street, 
and instantly catches the eye of any one looking up cr 
down this central thoroughfare. As we paused in front 
of it for a few moments, I had the pleasure of hearing 
two little boys from America, who are travelling with me, 
recall Alfred's diligence as a student, and his winning of 
the book offered by his mother as a prize; his invention 
of a candle chronometer, and of the lanthorn, as well as 
the familiar incident of the scolding given him by the 
neatherd's wife for his negligence in allowing her cakes 
to burn. The purity of his character, his self-sacrificing 
labors for his people, and the righteousness and prosperity 
of his reign have caused him to shine like a star in the 
long succession of English kings, who have too often been 
selfish, grasping, licentious or tyrannical. 

For example, in Winchester Cathedral, close at hand, 
lie the remains of Hardicanute, the last Danish monarch, 
who died of excessive drinking. The fact that a man -s 
buried in a cathedral argues nothing here as to his piety. 
If he wore the crown, or won battles, or wrote poems, he 



WINCHESTER WORTHIES. 29 

is given a place in God's house, regardless of his char- 
acter. 

But, besides men like Hardicanu'te or William Rufus, 
Winchester Cathedral boasts the possession of mortuary 
chests containing the bones of Canute, Egbert, Ethelwulf, 
and other kings. There is a monumental brass on the 
wall in memory of Jane Austen the novelist, who is 
buried under the pavement. 

Memorial of the ^ut by far the most interesting thing of 

Genue Fisherman, tliis kind in the cathedral, is the floor 
slab which marks the resting place of Izaak Walton, the 
Prince of Fishermen (1593-1683), and the author of The 
Compleat Angler, concerning which it has been truthfully 
said that Walton "hooked a much bigger fish that he 
angled for" when he offered his quaint treatise to the 
public. There is hardly a name in our literature, even of 
the first rank, whose immortality is more secure, or whose 
personality is the subject of a more devoted cult. Not 
only is he the sacer vates of a considerable sect in the 
religion of recreation, but multitudes who have never put 
a worm on a hook — even on a fly-hook — have been 
caught and securely held by his picture of the deliglits of 
the gentle craft and his easy, leisurely transcript of his 
own simple, peaceable, loving, and amusing character." 
When, on the outbreak of the civil war, he retired from 
business as milliner for men in London, he went to a place 
in the country which he had bought, but we are told that 
he spent most of his time "in the families of the eminent 
clergymen of England, of whom he was much beloved." 
He married twice, both wives being of distinguished 
clerical connection, the second, Anne Ken, sister of 
Thomas Ken, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells. Of 
Thomas Ken we shall have something in particular to say 
presently. As we strolled, :,fter supper, along the banks 



30 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

of the Itchen, from whose clear and grassy waters Walton 
himself had drawn so many fish, it was interesting to 
come upon anglers plying his beloved vocation. By the 
way, long before the time of Walton, there were people 
at Winchester who were fond of fish, and oysters, too. 
We read that, before the Reformation, the monks of 
Ne'tley Abbey, twelve miles distant, were wont to keep 
their brethren at Winchester supphed during Lent with 
oysters from Southampton Water, they in return receiving 
forty-two flagons of ale weekly. 

Enough has been said above to show that no church 
in Great Britain, outside of London, is richer in monu- 
ments than Winchester Cathedral. It has also the dis- 
tinction of great size, being 556 feet long, the longest nave 
in England. But the exterior is heavy, without a sug- 
gestion of the symmetry and grace of Salisbury. 
Wit in Win- The Other "lion" of Winchester, also, has a 

Chester College, very Uninviting and even forbidding exte- 
rior. This is the ancient College, a school for boys, where 
Alfred himself is said to have been educated, though Wil- 
liam of Wykeham refounded it in 1382. The front of it 
looks like a prison, but within the quadrangles, and 
stretching far back to the river, are lovely grounds covered 
with grass as green and smooth as a velvet carpet. The 
best thing I saw here was the following inscription on the 
walls of a school-room, accompanied by the painted em- 
blems which I mention below in brackets : 

Aut disce. [A mitre and crosier, as the expected rev/ards 

of learning.] 
Aut discede. [An inkhorn and sword, the emblems of the 

civil and military professions.] 
Manet sors tertia caedi. [A rod.] 

Which may be freely translated, "Either learn, or depart 
hence, or remain and be chastised/' though the pithy, allit- 



WINCHESTER WORTHIES. 31 

era'tive rendering in vogue among the boys is better, 
"Work, or walk, or be whopped" {h silent in the last 
word). American boys would probably have rendered it, 
"Learn, or leave, or be licked." 

The school has revenues of nearly $100,000 per an- 
num. There are 420 pupils. A number of them were 
having their supper as we passed through the dining-hall, 
eating from square beech-wood trenchers instead of 
plates, talking in shrill tones, and nudging and pushing 
each other just like American boys, unimpressed by the 
fact that the heavy, narrow tables from which they were 
eating were five hundred years old. How like boys it was 
to call the water pipe in the quadrangle, at which they 
wash their hands and faces, "Mo-ab," and the place where 
they blacked their shoes, "Edom," because in Psalm Ix. 8, 
it is said, "Moab is my wash-pot, I will cast my shoe over 
Edom." 

A Lovely ^^ w€ walked through the ancient cloisters 

Churchman, -we Came upou another characteristically 
boyish thing, a name cut on one of the stone pillars in 
clear, strong letters — "Tho Ken 1665" — and hardly 
anything in Winchester interested me so much as thi?, 
for the boy who cut it there, nearly two hundred and fifty 
years ago, became afterwards the author of what we call 
"the long metre doxology," four lines which have been 
sung more frequently than any other four lines in the 
English language, and which for generations to come will 
express the praise of increasing millions. This doxology 
was written by Ken as a concluding stanza to his famous 
Morning, Evening and Midnight Hymns, the best known 
of which, perhaps, is his evening hymn, "Glory to thee, 
my God, this night." 

But there are other reasons why it was a pleasure to 
be vividly reminded of Ken at Winchester. He was a 



32 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

man of singularly modest, sweet, and lovable disposition. 
Macaulay says that his character approached, "as near as 
human infirmity permits, to the ideal perfection of Chris- 
tian virtue." Yet he was no weakling, and on two notable 
occasions he showed that, mild and gentle as he was, he 
was also firm and fearless. 

When the profligate Charles II. was at Winchester, 
waiting for the completion of his palace there, he re- 
quested Ken, then prebendary at Winchester, to lend his 
house temporarily to the notorious Nell Gwynn, the 
King's mistress. Ken refused to let such a person have 
his house. Charles does not seem to have resented the 
affront, for he afterwards made Ken Bishop of Bath and 
Wells. It is one of the abominations of the English union 
of Church and State, that a thoroughly depraved man like 
Charles II., if he succeeds 'to the throne, becomes ipso 
facto the head of the Church of England. By the way, 
the altar books in black letter in Winchester Cathedral 
were presented to the church by this same graceless 
Charles II. Things get badly mixed under such a system 
as that of the Church of England. 
Ken's Defiance '^^^ sccoud occasiou ou which Kcu showed 

of James II. that, notwithstanding the infelicities of the 
national church, she does have men who will stand for 
God against the King when necessity arises, was when 
James II., without calling Parliameht, issued what he 
called a declaration for liberty of conscience, the real aim 
of which was to put England again under the yoke of 
Romanism, and ordered that this declaration should be 
read in every cathedral and church in the kingdom. Ken 
and six other bishops refused, and they were arrested, and 
committed to the Tower of London. Instantly a blaze of 
popular indignation burst forth. Enormous crowds as- 
sembled to see the seven bishops embark, the shore was 



WINCHESTER WORTHIES. 33 

covered with crowds of prostrate spectators, who asked 
their benediction, as did also the very soldiers sent to 
arrest them. The bishops bore themselves well through- 
out, and, a few days after, when they were tried in West- 
minster Hall, and the verdict "Not guilty" was brought 
in, there was a tumultuous outburst of joy. Thus Ken 
bore his bold and manly part in the revolution, which 
finally swept the Stuarts from the throne, and delivered 
England, for the time, from the menace of Romish 
domination. 

Winchester, then, with her ancient cathedral and her 
ancient school, with her Alfred the Great, her Izaak Wal- 
ton, and her Thomas Ken, with her wealth of heroic, and 
gentle and saintly memories, has given 'is two of the most 
profitable days of our sojourn in Southern England. 



CHAPTER V. 
The Ugliness and the Charm of London. 

London, July 3, 1902. 

VASTNESS and dinginess are the two features of 
London which make the deepest impression upon 
the visitor from America. Byron's description is exact — 

"A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping. 

Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye 
Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping 

In sight, then lost amid the forestry 
Of masts ; a wilderness of steeples peeping 

On tip-toe through their sea-coal canopy; 
A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown 
On a fool's head — and there is London town." 

Up to the time of Sir Richard Whittington, in the 
sixteenth century, the burning of coal in London was 
considered such a nuisance that it was punished by death. 
A dispensation to burn coal was first made in favor of 
Whittington, and this innovation on his part has affected 
the great city, of which he was four times Lord Mayor, 
infinitely more than the success of his celebrated venture 
in bringing up and selling a cat, which enabled him to lay 
the foundation of other investments. Yet the story of the 
cat is known to boys and girls the world over, while the 
story of the coal is known to comparatively few, even of 
their elders. 

Coal serves the same purposes in London that it does 
elsewhere, of course. But, while elsewhere it warms only 
thousands of people, and makes steam for only thousands 
of factories, locomotives, and steamboats, here it warms 



UGLINESS AND CHARM OF LONDON. 35 

and works for more than five millions. The output of 
smoke from this unparalleled consumption of coal is, of 
course, something enormous, and when we consider that 
the weather itself is frequently, perhaps I may say gen- 
erally, dull, heavy and thick, with an amourit of clouds 
and rain unknown to our brilliant American climate, it is 
not strange that the fogs of London are the thickest and 
mosit dangerous in the world, sometimes producing com- 
plete darkness at midday, and necessitating the lighting 
of the gas, as though it were midnight, and at other times 
producing a peculiar gloom, which is so impervious to 
light itself that the traffic of the streets has to be stopped 
for hours. Nor is it strange that the city is begrimed to 
an extraordinary degree from one end to the other. 
The Esthetic ^ have a friend in America, whom I some- 
vaiueofSoot. times jestingly call an "Anglomaniac," 
because lie admires Great Britain and her belongings so 
much. I once accused him of trying to convince me that 
the sky was bluer and the grass greener in Canada than 
in the United States — and who speaks of the blackness 
of the London buildings as "richness." It is interesting 
to find that he is supported in this view by some of the 
best writers on London. Hare, for instance, in speaking 
of St. Paul's Cathedral, emphasizes this point, "Subhmely 
impressive in its general outlines, it has a peculiar sooty 
dignity all its own, which, externally, raises it immeasure- 
ably above the fresh, modern-looking St. Peter's at Rome. 
G. A. Sala says, in one of his capital papers, that it is 
really the better for 'all the incense which all the chimneys 
since the time of Wren have offered at its shrine, and are 
still flinging up every day from their foul and grimy 
censers.' Here and there only is the original grey of the 
stone seen through the overlaying blackness." Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, too, says, "It is much better than staring 



36 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

white ; the edifice would not be nearly so grand without 
this drapery of black." By 'the way, the whole cost of 
St. Paul's, which was nearly four million dollars, was 
paid by a 'tax on every chaldron of coal brought into the 
port of London, "on which account it is said that the 
cathedral has a special claim of its own to its smoky 
exterior." 

Whatever one may think of these views, as to the 
aesthetic value of soot on great stone buildings like St. 
Paul's, it must be admitted by all that London, as a whole, 
is intensely ugly. Henry James, speaking of one of the 
fashionable quarters of the city, says, "As you walk along 
the streets, you look up at the brown brick house-walls, 
corroded with soot and fog, pierced wdth their straight, 
stiff window-slits, and finished, by way of cornice, with a 
little black line resembling a slice of curbstone. There is 
not an accessory, not a touch of architectural fancy, not 
the narrowest concession to beauty." In the indictment 
thus brought against one quarter of the city, it will be 
observed that there are other counts besides the soot, such 
as the monotony and plainness of the architecture and the 
character of the building materials, and in both particulars 
London does compare very unfavorably with some other 
cities. 

There are, of course, some very handsome 
stone buildings, such as the British Mu- 
seum, the new Parliament Buildings, many of the 
churches, and some of the government offices and private 
residences, but most of the houses are constructed of ugly 
brownish yellow brick, and capped with rigid rows of 
chimney pots. The same thing is true of English towns 
in general, and is one of the most obvious points of in- 
feriority on their part to the cities and towns of Scotland. 
Of Glasgow as it was in the eighteenth century, then, of 



UGLINESS AND CHARM OF LONDON. 37 

course, but a small place in comparison with its present 
size, Sir Walter Scott wrote, in Rob Roy, "The principal 
street was broad and important, decorated with public 
buildings of an architecture, rather striking than correct 
in point of taste, and running between rows of tall houses, 
built of stone; the fronts of which were occasionally 
richly ornamented with mason^work — a circumstance 
Which gave the street an imposing air of dignity and 
grandeur, of which most English towns are in some 
measure deprived, by the slight, unsubstantial, and perish- 
able quality and appearance of the bricks with which they 
are constructed." Of the later Glasgow of his time, Haw- 
thorne said, "It is the stateliest city in the kingdom." The 
adjective was well chosen. Those solid, strong, stone- 
built Scotch cities, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and 
others, are stately, as no English cities of brick are or can 
be; though there is also a suggestion of sombreness or 
severity about them, which seems to belong to that dour, 
grey land of the North; so that, after all, the Scottish 
cities do not afford the strongest contrast to London's 
dingy masses of brick. To find that, we must look to 
some of the cities of the Continent, especially Paris, the 
cleanest, brightest, and most beautiful of all the great 
capitals of the world. The Parisian climate is clearer, 
there is less fog and smoke, the houses are built of a white 
stone that gives the city a singular fairness to the eye, 
quite different from the rather gloomy greyness of the 
Scottish cities, and, of course, antipodal to the brick and 
grime of London. Moreover, the streets of Paris, driven 
this way and that through squalid tenement districts by 
Baron Hausmann, in his renovation of the city thirty or 
forty years ago, are broad and splendid thoroughfares, 
abounding in pure air, bright sunlight and green trees, all 
as different as possible from the cramped and tortuous 



38 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

streets and alleys of the British metropolis. "London has 
had no aedile like Hausmann." Few things add so much 
to the attractiveness of great cities as handsome streets 
along the water fronts. In Paris, on both sides of the 
Seine throughout its entire course in the city, are broad, 
well-paved, and well-shaded Quais, flanked by noble rows 
of stone buildings, while in London the Victoria Embank- 
ment is almost the only worthy improvement along the 
Thames. This Embankment is unquestionably a fine 
work, but as one walks along the broad stone pavement 
of it, the view he gets on the other side of the river is 
made up principally of dirty wharves and hideous ware- 
houses. 

In many respects, also, London is untidy. Orange 
peel, paper and trash are much in evidence. Why should 
there not be street scavengers like those who keep even 
the small towns in France and Germany quite free from 
that kind of litter? 

Immensity and Strictly Speaking, London is not a city, but. 
Multitude. as Madame de Stael called it, "a province 
of brick," and it looks as though it might become a conti- 
nent, for, though there are already more people in it than 
in the whole of Scotland, and more than twice as many 
as in the whole of Norway, it is still growing rapidly. It 
has more than three thousand miles of streets. In spread- 
ing thus, the great city has readhed out to, and absorbed, 
many towns that once stood around it. By the way, this 
accounts, to some extent for the fact that so many streets 
in London have the same name. I venture to think that 
the most preposterous and vexatious system of nomen- 
clature ever in vogue is that which has been employed for 
the streets of London. Until quite recently there were 
i66 diflferent streets in this city bearing the name of New, 
151 Church, 129 Union, 127 York, 119 John, 109 George, 



UGLINESS AND CHARM OF LONDON. 39 

and so on. Of late some part of this infuriating ambiguity 
has been removed by certain changes, but enough of it 
still remains to baffle and puzzle the visitor, and to cause 
him the loss of much valuable time and some temper. 
The Body is More ■'■ have uot flattered London. The picture 
than Raiment. drawn abovc is rcpulsivc. Perhaps some 
of my readers are ready to ask whether such a place can 
be attractive. Yes. Bulwer says of it, in Ernest Mal- 
travers, "The public buildings are few, and, for the most 
part, mean; the monuments of antiquity not comparable 
to those which the pettiest town in Italy can boast of; 
the palaces are sad rubbish ; the houses of our peers and 
princes are shabby and shapeless heaps of bricks. But 
what of all this ? The spirit of London is in her thorough- 
fares — her population ! What wealth — what cleanliness 
— what order — what animation ! How majestic, and yet 
how vivid, is the life that runs through her myriad veins 1" 
Externally, Paris is incomparably more beautiful than 
London, but the fundamental characteristics of the French 
people are not to be named with those of the British. The 
charm of London is deeper than that of Paris ; it wears 
better; it lasts longer. 

"Sir," said Dr. Johnson to Boswell, as they sat in the 
Mitre Tavern, in the centre of the city, "the happiness of 
London is not to be conceived, but by those who have been 
in it. I will venture to say there is more learning and 
science within the circumference of ten miles from where 
we sit than in all the rest of the kingdom." And again, 
"He who is tired of London is tired of existence." 

It is the history of the city and the character of the 
people, rather than the shape and color of their houses, 
that give London her abiding charm. And, with her vast 
treasures of literature, science, and art, what a paradise 
the great smoky city is to all readers and students, in 



40 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

spite of her wretched cHmate, and her oppressively dingy 
tout ensemble! 

It is only fair to add that the famous French sculptor, 
M. Rodin, has recently been expressing his admiration 
for the smoky British metropolis, declaring that "nothing 
could be more beautiful than the rich, dark, and ruddy 
tones of London buildings, in the grey and golden haze 
of the afternoon." 



CHAPTER VI. 
The English View of the Fourth of July. 

London, July 4, 1902. 

IT is the custom of the American Ambassador to Eng- 
land to give a reception every year, on the Fourth of 
July, to any of his countrymen who may be sojourning in 
the British metropolis. Being in London on the recur- 
rence of that memorable date in 1902, we made it our 
special business to attend this reception. It did not differ 
from the conventional affair of this kind. Mr. and Mrs. 
Choate and their daughter received their guests with 
gracious cordiality. The house is a large one, well fur- 
nished, and worthy to be the home of the representative 
of the greatest nation in the world. All the great halls, 
wide stairways, and spacious parlors were thrown open 
as well as the large dining-room, on the first floor, where 
refreshments were served, and a wide spreading marquee 
on the terrace in the rear, where lively music was dis- 
coursed and these were all filled with people, well 
dressed, and, for the most part, well-bred ladies and gen- 
tlemen, the ladies predominating — a company so numer- 
ous as to give one a very strong impression of the number 
of Americans visiting London in the summer. This sea- 
son may, indeed, have been exceptional, as the coronation 
of the King had been expected to take place in the latter 
part of June. But apart altogether from that, it would 
have been a large crowd, and it is certain that, under 
ordinary conditions, the number of our people visiting 
London steadily increases year by year, and that they 
4 



42 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

feel at home there, as among their own kith and kin, to a 
degree unknown in any other of the European capitals. 

Speaking by and large, I believe that we 
""rrendfiness ^^^^ ^^^ trust the British people, and that 
between they like and trust us. A marked change 

England. ^as comc ovcr the feelings of both peoples 

within the last quarter of a century. I 
remember well that when I was a boy, the school 
histories of the United States had the effect of making 
all the American boys hate the English. They were 
not informed that many of the English people, including 
some of their greatest statesmen, deprecated earn- 
estly the oppressive acts of the British government which 
led to the American Revolution, and that now the people 
of Great Britain are practically unanimous in the opinion 
that their government was wrong, and the Americans 
right in that great conflict. If any reader doubts this, I 
beg leave to call his attention to some statements found 
in a pamphlet called "Pictures from England's Story," 
which I bought at a London news stand. It belongs to a 
series of such works called "Books for the Bairns," which 
are written by English authors for the instruction of 
English children, and which, though well printed, in clear, 
bold type, and copiously illustrated, are sold at the almost 
incredibly small price of one penny apiece. 

"Most of the pictures which you will find in 
lishnow this book are pictures of English victories, 

View the but there is one picture, and that one of 

Revolution. the most significant of all, of an English 
defeat. This is the picture of the battle 
of Bunker's Hill, that was fought in America. I 
want you to take particular notice of that picture, be- 
cause, although the English were defeated, it was much 
better for them to be defeated than it would have been 



ENGLISH VIEW OF FOURTH OF JULY. 43 

for them to have been victorious. You will often be told 
that you must always be glad when your country is victo- 
rious, but that is not true, for justice and right are greater 
than your country. When your country fights against 
justice, and against right, and against liberty, it is fighting 
against God, and even if it succeeds for the time being, it 
will always suffer in the long run. In the war which be- 
gan with the battle of Bunker's Hill, England was in the 
wrong. Every one admits that now, but at the time when 
it was fought, the King and his ministers, and most of 
the people of England, believed that they were in the 
right, because it was the cause of England, and England 
was the home of liberty, and it seemed to them quite 
absurd to think that the American farmers could have 
right on their side. But the American farmers were in 
the right. They were few, they were poor, they had no 
army, they had no king, and they had no parliament, and 
it seemed quite impossible to our forefathers of those days 
to think that such a small people could possibly stand up 
against the armies and the navies of Great Britain. But 
Great Britain was in the wrong. The Americans were 
the English people who had gone across the sea to make 
new homes for themselves in another country, where they 
could be free to govern themselves in their own way, 
without interference from the British government. They 
were good people, honest, hard-working, pious folk, who 
had carried with them across the sea the English love of 
liberty and self-government. 

"The English in England had been victo- 

A Fair State- .... . ^^ ^, 

mentof rious m their war agamst France. They 

the Question were govcmed by a German king, who 

and the ° ■' * 

Conflict. was much less in sympathy with English 

ideas than were the Americans, and he 

believed, and the majority of the English in Eng- 



44 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

land agreed with him at that time, that the Americans 
ought to be content to be governed by governors sent out 
from England, and should be willing to pay the taxes, 
which the English Parliament ordered them to pay. Now 
the English have always maintained that no king or gov- 
ernment has a right to compel the people to pay any 
money for the support of the government unless the 
people consent to pay it. Taxation without representation 
is tyranny, and the Americans said, that as they had no 
voice in the election of the English Parliament, which 
made the taxes, they were not bound to pay them. The 
English said, that whether they liked it or not, the Ameri- 
cans must pay them. The Americans said they would not. 
The English said they would make them, and they sent an 
army to America to compel the Americans to pay the 
taxes, and to obey the King and Parliament. In doing 
this they were sinning against the first principle of Eng- 
lish liberty, and the Americans took up arms to defend 
their liberty against the English soldiers. They met at 
Bunker's Hill, and, to the astonishment of every one, the 
undrilled farmers, who knew how to shoot, met and de- 
feated the disciplined troops of England. England sent 
thousands upon thousands of men across the Atlantic; 
they defeated the Americans again and again ; they 
burned their houses ; they ravaged their country ; they 
captured all their cities ; but still the Americans went on 
fighting, because they were of the true English breed, 
and they would rather lose their lives than give up the 
independence of their country. They were not indepen- 
dent at first, they were British colonists ; but when they 
found themselves attacked by the British, they declared 
their independence, and formed themselves into a republic, 
without a king, or a House of Lords, or an Established 
Church. 



ENGLISH VIEW OF FOURTH OF JULY. 45 
„,^ ^ , ^ "The war went on for lone: years; it cost 

What England . . 

Learned from England 3. hundred millions of money, and 
Fightine thousands upon thousands of brave sol- 

against '^ 

her own diers ; but the English were fighting 

Principles. agaiust their own English principles, which 
were defended by George Washington and the Ameri- 
cans with such bravery and heroism that at last the 
English, notv/ithstanding all their pride, and their wealth, 
and their power, had to give in, and own themselves 

beaten Fortunately, we were defeated, and 

from our defeat we learned a great lesson, which we 
did not forget for nearly a hundred years. That lesson is 
that it is impossible to govern a white, freedom-loving 
people except by their own consent. We took that lesson 
to heart so much that for nearly a hundred years we never 
again attempted to compel our colonists to do anything 
they did not want to do. We gave them freedom, and let 
them govern themselves upon the true English principles 
which George Washington fought for, and which George 
III. . fought against. The British Empire, of which we 
are so proud to-day, exists because the principles of 
George III. were knocked on the head at the battle of 
Bunker's Hill, and in the long war which followed it. 
. . . The United States of America are now a great 
nation, which is more numerous and more powerful than 
Great Britain." 

This candid and manly statement, made by an English 
author and published broadcast for the instruction of 
English children, is one of the most interesting things I 
have encountered in England, and I have thought it worth 
Mobile to quote it here in the interests of a still better 
understanding between the two great nations of the same 
stock, and the same speech, and the same political 
ideals. 



46 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

A slighter indication of the same English breadth of 
view in regard to this question was given by the good 
ladies who have charge of the pleasant boarding house, on 
Torrington Square, which we have made our home on all 
our visits to London, and who, on the morning of the 
Fourth of July, thought of it themselves, and had a tiny 
firecracker lying by the plate of each young American in 
our party when we came down to breakfast, besides other 
indications later in the day of their readiness, though 
themselves staunchly British, to enter sympathetically into 
the enthusiasm with which Americans celebrate the natal 
day of our nation. 

A movement has been started in London to erect a 
statue of George Washington. It was decided that the 
subscriptions should be confined to British subjects. 
Archdeacon Sinclair, in submitting the plan to the (Puri- 
tan) Society, said : 

"Englishmen have at last fully recognized the great 
qualities of Washington. I feel assured that nothing will 
be more popular in this country than such a tribute to that 
great man of English birth, who has done so much for the 
world's history, not only for the young nation across the 
sea, but for Great Britain as well." 

Archdeacon Sinclair announced that he was authorized 
to offer a place for the statue in St. Paul's Cathedral, 

But now I find that I have become so much interested 
in the statement of this reversal of British sentiment con- 
cerning the American struggle for independence, that I 
have left myself no space to speak of the burning question 
in England just now, in regard to which the government 
has taken a position, extraordinary as this may seem, 
which violates the same principles of liberty for which 
the Americans fought, and so I must reserve that for an- 
other letter. 



ENGLISH VIEW OF FOURTH OF JULY. 47 

P. S. — Since my return to America I have seen an 
interesting statement by the Rev. R. J. Campbell, of Lon- 
don, in regard to the steady increase of the pro-British 
feeling in the United States. He says that a book has 
just been published by an American barrister named Dos 
Passos, called The Anglo-Saxon Century and the Uni- 
Hcation of the English-Speaking People. This gentleman, 
although of Spanish origin, is of American birth, and his 
interest in the "future of his own country had led him to 
examine that of ours. He believes that the twentieth 
century is to be the Anglo-Saxon century, even more 
than the nineteenth, and the conditions of an alliance, as 
advocated by him, are as follows : 

1. The Dominion of Canada voluntarily to divide 
itself into such different States, geographically arranged, 
as its citizens desire, in proportion to population, and each 
State to be admitted as a full member of the American 
Union, in accordance with the conditions of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. 

2. To establish common citizenship between all citizens 
of the United States and the British Empire. 

3. To establish absolute freedom of commercial inter- 
course and relations between the countries involved, to 
the same extent as that which exists between the different 
States constituting the United States of America. 

4. Great Britain and the United States to coin gold, 
silver, nickel, and copper money, not necessarily display- 
ing the same devices or mottoes, but possessing the same 
money value, and interchangeable everywhere within the 
limits covered by the treaty, and to establish a uniform 
standard of weights and measures. 

5. To provide for a proper and satisfactory arbitration 
tribunal to decide all questions which may arise under the 
treaty. 



48 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Much of this may seem chimerical and unsound, but 
there is certainly a feeling in this country which is influ- 
encing things in the direction of a better understanding, 
and a consciousness of a common destiny between the 
British Empire and the United States. In private one is 
constantly meeting with expressions of it, and I may as 
well add that nothing has caused me more surprise than 
this one fact. One frequently heaio the hope expressed 
that a common citizenship may one day be possible with- 
out any interference with the constitution of either coun- 
try. This is a new idea to me, and may be a fruitful one 
some day. 



CHAPTER VII. 
How THE English Regard the Americans. 

London, July lo, 1902 

THERE are many indications of a better understand- 
ing, and an increasing confidence and regard be- 
tween the two great English-speaking nations on either 
side of the Atlantic. One su'^h indication is the marked 
change of tone on the part of English writers in their 
references to their American cousins. The time was 
when, in British books and newspapers, Americans were 
uniformly represented as coarse and loud. There are 
still too many Americans, at home and abroad, who de- 
serve to be so described, but the old contemptuous tone 
towards Americans in general is found only in an occa- 
sional writer who lives chiefly in the past. For instance, 
Mr. Hare, the author of some of the best guide books for 
reading people that have ever appeared, such as his Walks 
in London, and his Walks in Rome, seems still to regard 
the average American as the embodiment of bad taste and 
crass ignorance. In his book on Florence, after speaking 
of various other hotels, and their picturesque locations, 
he says, "Americans may possibly like the Savoy Hotel 
in the horrible Piazza Victorio Emanuele" ; and in his 
book on Rome he says it is depressing to hear Americans, 
when asked their opinion of the Venus de Medici, say, 
"they guess they are not particularly gone on stone gals." 
But Americans only smile as they read these things, 
remembering that Hare is the same man who bewails the 
downfall of the papacy as a temporal power, and who 
believes that the emancipation and unification of Italy by 



50 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Victor Immanuel was a calamity, notwithstanding the 
steadily increasing prosperity of the people, and the stead- 
ily rising financial credit of the nation, and notwithstand- 
ing the fact that every unprejudiced observer acknow- 
ledges that the chief hindrance to still more rapid progress 
is the swarm of fat priests and monks who still infest 
Italy, and in the interest of the papacy oppose the new 
and enlightened government at every turn. 

In short. Hare's view of the average Ameri- 
The English ^^^j^ jg j^^^ g^^^ ^^ anachronism as to entitle 

Admit that 

America him fairly to be called a freak. He cer- 

Hoidsthe taiuly does not represent his countrymen 

of to-day in their view of the spirit and 
culture of the American people. The usual tone of 
English reference to them is not only not contemptu- 
ous, but respectful and friendly, and in the case of 
the industrial and commercial enterprise of the Ameri- 
cans there is even a tinge of fear in the tone in which 
the English refer to them. For example, a very able and 
candid English editor, in speaking of Mr. Andrew Car- 
negie's address as Rector of St. Andrews University, last 
October, which he pronounces one of the most remarkable 
addresses ever delivered in Great Britain, practically 
admits that America has outstripped the mother country 
in this respect at least. He says, "Mr. Carnegie is a per- 
sonage. A man who has risen from nothing to the sum- 
mit of American finance is a man to be reckoned with. 
Mr. Carnegie is also a Scotchman, and a devout lover of 
his country. It is no pleasure to him to contemplate the 
decadence of Great Britain. He is anxious to say the best 
he can for our country, and yet the one thing to be noted 
in his address is his immense, overpowering faith in 
America. . . . She has such resources, and is in- 
creasing so rapidly that nothing can stand against her. 



HOW ENGLISH REGARD AMERICANS. 51 

Britain's employers are wanting in energy and enterprise, 
and the employed think too much of how little they need 
do, and too little of how much they can do. Britain may 
maintain her present trade, but America will in the life- 
time of many people have a population equal to that of 
Europe to-day, excluding Russia. America is not an 
armed camp, as Europe is. It is one united whole at 
peace with itself, and enjoys immunity from attack, while 

in machinery its position is far ahead of others 

That a man so shrewd, successful and experienced as 
Mr. Carnegie, and so well disposed towards Britain, 
should have come reluctantly to the conclusion that for 
Britain there is no future, and for America there is the 
future of the world, is a fact of first-rate significance, and 
we should like to see how he is to be answered." This is 
a remarkably candid statement. 

English Candor ^" "^^ ^^^t letter I Said that the English peo- 
and English pie uow frankly acknowledge that their 

Inconsistency, r r ii • ii i.i 

loreiathers were wrong m the war they 
waged against the American colonies, and openly rejoice 
in the victory achieved by Washington and his associates 
on behalf of the principle of no taxation without repre- 
sentation, and I referred in closing to what seems to be a 
strange inconsistency on the part of many of the English 
people in upholding a policy at the present time, which 
involves a violation of the same principle. The thing 
referred to was the new Education Bill, perfidiously in- 
troduced into Parliament by the Tory party, at the insti- 
gation of certain leaders of the Anglican Church, at a 
time when that party had an overwhelming majority in 
the House of Commons, a majority given it by the coun- 
try for the specific purpose of bringing the war in South 
Africa to a speedy and successful close, and when the 
electors never dreamed of that majority being used to 



52 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

promote sectarianism, and to oppress the consciences of a 
great body of the people. The object of the bill is to tax 
the whole population of England for the support of 
schools which are controlled, not by the people, but by 
the ritualistic clergy of the Anglican Church, or, as an 
evangelical clergyman of that church himself puts it, the 
intention of the measure is "to hand the education of the 
coming generations over to the Romanizing priesthood of 
the Anglican Church." The mere suggestion of public 
support without public control ought to rouse the indigna- 
tion of a free people. But the bill proposes a worse thing 
even than this, so far as the Nonconformists are con- 
cerned, for they are not only to be asked to pay for the 
support of a religion they do not believe in, but also to 
hand over their children to its teachers, in order that they 
may be perverted. In other words, they are to be asked 
to pay for the destruction of their own religion. 

However apathetic some Englishmen may be in the 
face of such proposals, that is the sort of thing that never 
fails to rouse liberty-loving Scotland, and so, along with 
the earnest denunciations of the bill by various organiza- 
tions of English Free Churchmen, it has been heartily 
condemned by all the great religious bodies of Scotland. 
Scotchmen and the ^^"^^ Andrew, as the weekly organ of 
Education Bill. the Church of Scotland is called, says 
as to the origin, spirit and purpose of the measure, "There 
is no real meaning in calling the party in the English 
Church, which is at present the most indefatigable, the 
'High Church' party. The party is Romanist, pure and 
simple ; and it is devoting itself to the uprooting of the 

Protestantism of the young people of England 

Can we wonder at the intelligent Nonconformist revolting 
against his children being brought under the fatally sinis- 



HOW ENGLISH REGARD AMERICANS. 53 

ter influence here referred to, and knowing the close con- 
nection between church and school, resolving- that he will 
resist, with all his might, the perpetuation of a system in 
which general control of the public schools shall be in the 
hands of men who openly inculcate the doctrine of the 
corporeal presence, baptismal regeneration, prayers for 
the dead, the duty of confession, adoration of the cross ; 
and who beguile the children of their schools to attend 
'the sacrifice of the mass,' with the incense and candles, 
and all the other paraphernalia under which they have 
disguised the Lord's Supper?" 

The folly of the Anglicans in this matter will hasten 
the fall of the Established Church of England. And in 
any case the Nonconformists will not have long to wait, 
for they are steadily and rapidly gaining ground. In 
1700 Dissenters were, in comparison with Churchmen, 
one to twenty-two; in 1800, one to eight, and in 1900, 
one to one. That shows that the day is not distant when 
real religious liberty shall be established in England, and 
all such bigoted legislation as this present Education Bill 
shall be swept from her statute books. Meantime, it is 
certain that it will go on the books, notwithstanding its 
glaring injustice. There is not a doubt that Mr. Balfour's 
government will push the measure through, by means of 
the votes of its great war majority. The consequence 
will be that thousands of Nonconformists will refuse to 
pay the rates, then the King's officers will seize and sell 
some of their property, and perhaps numbers of them will 
see the inside of prison walls before all is over. But thev 
will make history in England. For, when men are sold 
out and imprisoned for the sake of conscience and relig- 
ious liberty and a historic English principle, viz., that of 
public control of public funds — when these things occur. 



54 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

an idea will begin to penetrate to the average English 
mind, the English sense of fair play will be roused, and 
the English zeal for liberty kindled anew, to say nothing 
of the English instinct of self-preservation — and then 
the day of reckoning will have come. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
The British Republic and the House of Commons. 

London, July 15, 1902. 

THE nominal ruler of the British Empire is His 
Majesty, Edward VII. The real ruler is the House 
of Commons. Though I was in Great Britain at the time 
of the coronation, and saw something of the pomp with 
which it was celebrated, I have not thought it worth while 
to occupy the time of my readers with descriptions of it, 
since it is only one of those glittering fictions which the 
English people see fit to preserve, notwithstanding their 
general good sense — a somewhat childish observance of 
outworn mediaeval ceremonies, a foolish and expensive 
form. But certainly I ought not to quit the subject of 
the political ideas suggested by a sojourn in London, and 
especially by repeated visits to that most interesting 
portion of it, Westminster, without some reference to the 
part it has played in developing the model of all the free 
governments of the world. For, as a British writer has 
truly said, Westminster is historically the centre of poli- 
tics, not for London and Great Britain only, but for the 
civilized world. "All civilized nations, both in Europe 
and America, as well as all the British colonies, have now 
adopted the constitution which was here founded and 
developed, with a single head of the State and two cham- 
bers; though, with regard to the headship of the State 
and the upper chamber, the elective has, in the most 
advanced politics, been substituted for the hereditary 
principle, while in the cases of the United States and 
Switzerland there is a federal as well as a national ele- 



56 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

ment. The Roman imposed his institutions with arms 
upon a conquered world ; a willing world has adopted the 
institutions which had their original seat at Westminster, 
But the British Constitution now means little more than 
the omnipotence of the House of Commons. The im- 
mense edifice is still styled the palace ; but the King who 
now dwells in the palace is the sovereign people." 
The Houses For this rcason it is more common now to 

of Parliament, gpcak of the Palace of Westminster as the 
Houses of Parliament. It is a vast and costly pile, one of 
the largest Gothic buildings in the world, erected about 
fifty years ago, in the Tudor style, at an outlay of 
fifteen million dollars. The extremely florid exterior is 
constructed of a limestone so perishable that already it 
costs ten thousand dollars a year to keep it in repair. 
Tastes differ as to the merit of the architecture. Some 
pronounce the building majestic and imposing. Others 
say that at a little distance the river front looks like a 
large modern cotton mill. All agree that there is too much 
elaborate ornamentation. 

This is true of the interior, as well as the exterior, 
and, as some one has said, it is interesting to observe the 
attempt made to preserve a constitutional fiction by deco- 
rating with special gorgeousness that Chamber of the 
House which has been stripped of all its power, viz., the 
House of Lords. It is resplendent in the vivid red leather 
which covers the seats and backs of the straight benches, 
rising in tiers on the opposite sides, and in the sumptuous 
frescoes of the walls, the rich stained glass of the win- 
dows, and the excessive gilding of the ceiling. The 
leather on the benches in the House of Commons is black, 
and there is less of magnificence in general than in the 
Chamber of the Peers, though it also is a rich interior. 

Yet neither of them makes an impression of spacious- 



THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 57 

ness and grandeur, and, to one who has seen the noble 
halls in which our Senate and House of Representatives 
sit at Washington, both of these legislative chambers of 
Britain seem small and cramped. They are also mean 
and uncomfortable in their arrangements as compared 
with those of our Congress. At Washington each mem- 
ber has his own chair, and a desk for his books and 
papers. But here there are no desks, only rigid benches, 
upon which the members sit or loll, facing each other 
across the narrow chamber, the supporters of the govern- 
ment on the Speaker's right, and the opposition on his 
left. Worst of all is the fact that, though the combined 
science of the country was employed in the construction 
of these halls of session and debate, they are both wretched 
failures as to ventilation and acoustics, the House of 
Lords being so bad in the latter particular that it used to 
be said that members went out to buy an evening paper 
in order to learn what the debate was about. 
Getting into the As the House of Commons is King, we 
Lower House.; looked forward with eager interest to a visit 
to that potent body. At the instance of our good friend, 
Dr. Kerr, Sir James Campbell, a Presbyterian member of 
the House from Scotland, wrote us an invitation to visit 
the Commons in session, but, when we reached the door, 
at the appointed hour, and sent in our cards through the 
line of policemen and doorkeepers, there was no reply. 
When we had waited some time, a gentleman in the crowd 
at the entrance accosted us, and asked if we were not 
Americans, and if we did not wish to get into the House, 
both of which polite inquiries we answered with an 
eager affirmative. He said he thought he could arrange 
it for us, and, handing us his card, from which we 
learned that he was the London correspondent of a great 
American newspaper, he left us for a minute, and soon 
S 



58 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

returned, accompanied by a friend of his, one of the Irish 
members of the House, to whom we were introduced, and 
who promptly procured us permission to enter the visitors' 
gallery. At Washington, any one who chooses can go 
into the visitors' gallery, and listen to the debates, but 
here there is a good deal of red tape. You must even 
register your name and address, besides being introduced 
by a member, before you can pass the turnstile and go in. 
The Debate and We soou discovcrcd that wc wcrc vcry for- 
the Debaters, tunatc in gaining admission just when we 
did, as the greatest question of the whole year, and, in- 
deed, the greatest question that has been before the House 
for many years, was up, viz., the Education Bill, the 
object of which is to put the schools of England, for the 
support of which the whole population is taxed, under 
the control, not of the representatives of the public, but of 
the ritualistic clergy of the Church of England ; and in 
the course of this very afternoon nearly every prominent 
man in both of the great political parties was drawn into 
the discussion. When we entered. Sir William Vernon 
Harcourt, the veteran Liberal statesman, had the floor. 
Among others who followed him on the same side of the 
House were Mr. James Bryce, the well-known author of 
The Holy Roman Empire and The American Common- 
wealth, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the leader of the 
Liberal party in the House, and Mr. Lloyd George, who 
has made the most active and brilliant opposition to this 
treacherous, sectarian measure. The Irish Roman Catho- 
lics, who, of course, have voted steadily and solidly with 
the Anglican High Churchmen for this iniquitous bill, 
which strikes at the root of the fundamental republican 
principle of public control of public funds, were repre- 
sented in the debate by John Dillon. Of the others who 
spoke in support of the bill, the two who interested me 



THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 59 

most were Lord Hugh Cecil, the special patron of the 
measure, and his gifted cousin, Mr. Arthur J. Balfour, 
the government leader of the House. The former, who, 
I believe, is the son of the veteran Prime Minister, Lord 
Salisbury, is a slender, pale, nervous young man, who 
advocates very narrow views in very good language, 
nervously pressing or wringing his slim fingers the while, 
and who is the special champion of the ritualists and 
reactionaries. Far more able and far more interesting in 
every way is his accomplished kinsman, Mr. Balfour, 
who, a few days later, was appointed Prime Minister. 
He is a tall, ruddy, handsome Scotchman, with a rare 
grace and charm of manner, and an exceptional air of 
high breeding, who speaks in a manly, straightforward 
way, with no trace of the bitterness, or even the heat so 
common in political discussions. When one notes the 
clearness of his mind, and the attractiveness of his ad- 
dress, it gives a keener edge to the regret that such a man 
should be on the wrong side of a great question like this. 
Mr. Balfour is well known to the sporting world as a 
golf player, and to the reading world as the author of a 
thoughtful book on The Foundations of Religious Belief. 

It will interest the readers of this paper to know that 
he is a Presbyterian, as Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 
the leader of the Opposition, also is. So that the leaders 
of both the great parties in the House of Commons are 
Scotchmen and Presbyterians. 

One of the interesting consequences of Great Britain's 
having a Presbyterian Prime Minister is, that under their 
system of the union of church and state, a Presbyterian 
will appoint the bishops and archbishops of the Church 
of England to the vacancies of those offices which occur 
during his premiership. This must be a very bitter pill 
for the extreme High Churchmen. 



6o A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

English and The failure of our arrangement with Sir 

American Oratory, james Campbell tumed out to be the re- 
sult of a misunderstanding, so he courteously renewed it 
for the following day, when his friend and fellow-member, 
Mr. Maxwell, who is also a Scotch Presbyterian, met us 
at the door, in the absence of Sir James, and, after show- 
ing us again everything of interest about the Houses, 
including the restaurant, and the wide and spacious ter- 
race, running nearly the whole length of the building 
alongside the Thames, where the members come, on fine 
afternoons, to drink their tea, ushered us into seats "under 
the gallery" of the House, which are regarded as the most 
desirable for visitors, since there the spectator is on a 
level with the speakers. 

The Education Bill was still under discussion, and we 
heard some good speaking, but not so good as I have 
heard at Washington, and in the Constitutional Conven- 
tion at Richmond. The matter was generally good, but 
the manner was in most cases constrained, if not hesitat- 
ing, and nearly all the members, including Mr. Balfour 
himself, have a habit of grasping the lapels of their coats, 
"taking themselves in hand," as some one has described it. 
In short, the speaking itself lacks the ease, freedom, 
fluency and force of our better American oratory. 

However, it is only fair to give, before closing, the 
estimate of a Canadian writer, who is familiar with both 
London and Washington, and who says : 

"The average of speaking is not so high in the House 
of Commons as in Congress ; but the level of the best 
speakers is higher. American oratory almost always 
savors somewhat of the school of elocution, and has the 
fatal drawback of being felt to aim at effect. The great- 
est of English speakers, such as John Bright, the greatest 
of all, or Gladstone, create no such impression; you feel 
that their only aim is to produce conviction." 



THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 6i 

One of the most striking things about the House of 
Commons to the view of an American visitor is the well- 
groomed appearance of the members. They are invari- 
ably attired in faultless Prince Albert coats, often with 
a boutonniere on the lapel, and they all wear silk hats, 
which, by the way, they are not expected to take off 
during the sittings, except when addressing the House. 
It is said to be the best-dressed assembly in the world. 
and is in sharp contrast with the more democratic and 
unconventional, not to say slovenly, mode of dressing 
which obtains in our House of Representatives, where the 
ordinary costume is a long, loose frock coat — sometimes 
even a sa^ k — and a derby or felt hat. 



CHAPTER IX. 
Cambridge and Her Schools. 

Cambridge, July 21, 1902. 

THE Cathedral route from London to Edinburgh 
takes one through an interesting stretch of eastern 
England, part of which is as flat as Holland, with fens 
and canals and windmills, yielding, however, in the north 
to a more rolling country, vestibule, as it were, to the hills 
of Scotland. As its name indicates, this route afifords the 
opportunity of seeing in rapid succession the great cathe- 
drals at Ely, Lincoln, York, and Durham, not to speak 
of others. But nothing on this side of England equals 
in interest the university town of Cambridge, with its 
twenty colleges and three thousand students, its venerable 
collegiate buildings, its far-famed "backs" (that is, the 
lovely lawns and stately avenues behind the colleges), its 
clear and placid little river, and its memories of great 
men and great causes. It is an exceptionally clean town, 
of some forty-five thousand inhabitants. 
TheTwoUni- Oxford, farther west, is a somewhat larger 
versity Towns, city (about fifty-thrcc thousand), with 
twenty-three colleges and about three thousand students, 
contains an unparalleled collection of picturesque aca- 
demic buildings, and has some single features which are 
not surpassed anywhere, such as Magdalen (pronounced 
Maudlen) College, "the loveliest of all the homes of learn- 
ing," Addison's Walk, The Broad Walk, and the "stream- 
like windings of that glorious street," to which Words- 
worth devoted a sonnet. But Cambridge, too, has some 
features which cannot be paralleled, even in Oxford. For 



CAMBRIDGE AND HER SCHOOLS. 63 

instance, Cambridge has, in Trinity, the largest college 
in England. It has, in the chapel of King's College, a 
building of marvellous beauty; Oxford cannot match it, 
nor can it be matched anywhere in England save by that 
''miracle of the world," the Chapel of Henry VII., in 
Westminster Abbey. The roll of Cambridge's alumni is 
illustrious to a degree, having such names as Bacon, Eras- 
mus, Newton, Milton, Cromwell, Macaulay, Byron. 
Thackeray, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Harvey (discoverer 
of the circulation of the blood), Darwin, and many, many 
others equally well known. 

But the chief difference between Cambridge 
more Pro- ^^d Oxford is in the spirit and influence of 

gressivethan ^]^q j-^q uoon the nation and the world, and 

Oxford. ^ 

here the glory of Cambridge excelleth. It 
used to be said in the fourteenth century, "What Oxford 
thinks to-day, England thinks to-morrow." But, as a 
matter of fact, it is Cambridge which has represented the 
true progress of England and her modem political and 
intellectual development, in such men as Milton and 
Cromwell, Isaac Newton and William Pitt, Darwin and 
Tennyson. Oxford has stood chiefly for the reactionary 
ideas of the High Church Anglicans. 

The difference was sharply marked in the great testing 
time of the seventeenth century, when the East supported 
the Parliament, and the West supported the king. Lon- 
don and Cambridge were the centres of the Puritan 
strength, Oxford was the capital of Charles I. Crom- 
well's home was but a short distance from Cambridge, 
and he was a student at Sidney-Sussex College, where we 
had the pleasure of seeing his rooms, and the celebrated 
crayon portrait of him in the college hall. Roughly, we 
might say, Cambridge has stood for the Parliament and 
the people, Oxford for the king and the priests. At least, 



64 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

there has been more of the spirit of freedom, democracy 
and progress at the eastern university town than at the 
western. 

ThePresbyte- That the samc diflfercnce still exists was in- 
rian Element, dicated to US by 3. simple fact. When we 
inquired at Oxford for a Presbyterian church, the maid- 
servant said, "That is Protestant, isn't it?" She was evi- 
dently a Romanist, but it is likely that most of the Church 
of England people resident in Oxford never heard of 
Presbyterians, though our denomination is so much larger 
than theirs. Oxford is the head centre of Anglicanism, 
and there is no Presbyterian church there, though the 
Congregationalists and Wesleyans are represented. But 
at Cambridge we found a flourishing, though not yet a 
very large, church of our faith and order, under the pas- 
toral care of a gifted and earnest man, the Rev. G. John- 
ston Ross, whose addresses at the Winona Conference, in 
Indiana, this summer, gave so much satisfaction. We had 
the pleasure of meeting him, and many of his people, at 
a pleasant garden party, to which all the Presbyterians of 
Cambridge were invited. 

By the way, we saw a thing in that church which we 
had never seen before. When the minister read the Scrip- 
ture lesson from the Old Testament, in the English Ver- 
sion, the two ladies in whose pew we were sitting opened 
the Hebrew Bible, and followed the reading in that. and. 
in like manner, when the New Testament lesson was read. 
they followed in the Greek text. To these two ladies, 
whose learning has been recognized by the Universities 
of St. Andrews and Heidelberg, in the bestowment uporv 
them of the degree of LL. D., and whose services to the 
cause of biblical learning, in the discovery and editing of 
the old Sinaitic Syriac manuscripts of the New Testa- 
ment, have made them famous throughout the world of 



CAMBRIDGE AND HER SCHOOLS. 65 

scholars/ we had a letter of introduction from a relative 
of theirs in Virginia, who is a kind friend of ours. And 
thus we had the pleasure of meeting at their table some 
of the choice spirits of the University, including the 
professors in Westminster College, which is the theologi- 
cal seminary of the Presbyterian Church in England. 
Westminster It was largely through the munificence of 
College. Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson, the two elect 

ladies referred to above, that this institution was trans- 
planted from its former undesirable location, and estab- 
lished in the city of Cambridge, thus bringing the Puritan 
theology back to its original home in England. The 
financial agent who canvassed the English Presbyterian 
Churches for the supplementing of the donation of these 
two large-minded and large-hearted ladies was the Rev. 
Dr. John Watson, of Liverpool, better known to the gen- 
eral reader as "Ian Maclaren," author of Beside the Bon- 
nie Brier Bush, and other popular works ; and for special 
reasons it was with no ordinary interest that I examined 
the result of his toils in the outfit with which the institu- 
tion has been provided. It is admirable. The location, 
indeed, is not so good or so beautiful as that of Union 
Seminary, in Richmond, with its breezy sweeps of green 
campus, and the building, which is of red brick like ours, 
is not nearly so imposing as the handsome group at Rich- 
mond. Everything, in fact, is on a much smaller scale, 
naturally so, as the English Presbyterian Church is a 
much smaller body than our Southern Church. But, on 
the other hand, there are some features that are superior, 
e. g., the stairways are oi stone, not of wood as with us. 

* Of the value of this find Prof. Adolf Harnack says : "As the 
text is almost completely preserved, this Syrus Sinaiticus is one of 
the most important witnesses ; nay, it is extremely probable that 
it is the most important witness, for our gospels." 



6S A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

The dining-hall is spacious, comely, cool, inviting, with 
ornamental windows, and walls hung with portraits of 
Presbyterian worthies, and the tables are heavy and hand- 
some, of hard wood. No seminary in our Southern 
Church, or in the Northern, has a sufficiently attractive 
refectory. The one at Union Seminary is better than 
most of them, but it, too, is below the mark. Some be- 
nevolent person can do a great work for our future min- 
istry by presenting that institution with a properly equip- 
ped refectory building. 

The rooms occupied by the students at Westminster 
are much smaller than ours at Union, and seem in some 
cases cramped, but there is a bath-room for every four 
students. I fear this will seem almost a sinful degree of 
cleanliness to those brethren who a few years ago were so 
much opposed to the introduction of any bath-rooms and 
other modern conveniences into our seminary. 

There are three professors at Westminster College, 
Cambridge: Principal Dykes, Dr. Gibb, and Professor 
Skinner; and twenty-three students, a slightly smaller 
number than last year. 

The same Difficulties The churchcs here are facing the same 
about Candidates, problem that confronts those in America 
as to an adequate supply of ministers. The number of can- 
didates is decreasing rapidly in Scotland. Some attribute 
this decline to the stagnant spiritual condition of the 
churches throughout Europe and America, and connect 
it with the spread of devitalizing critical theories con- 
cerning the Scriptures. But the zeal and activity of the 
churches do not seem to be deficient in other particulars. 
It is not a question to discuss here, but it is one for Chris- 
tian people to think about and pray over. 

The identity of our difficulties in America and Britain 
may be seen again in the fact that here also the theological 



CAMBRIDGE AND HER SCHOOLS. 67 

schools are complaining that the universities are gradu- 
ating men with the degree of A. B. who have never 
studied Greek. How can a man without Greek master 
the New Testament in the original? Is it not clear that 
no man can be a thoroughly furnished minister who has 
not studied Greek? Yet some of our own colleges in 
America, conducted under Presbyterian auspices, are en- 
couraging this crippling omission by offering an A. B. 
course without Greek. 



CHAPTER X. 
From England to Scotland — Eastern Route. 

Edinburgh, August 23, 1902. 

SOON after leaving Newcastle-on-Tyne, the marked 
change in the scenery of the country through which 
we were passing apprised us of the fact that we had 
o-u T ^ i-.u crossed the border, and were now in Scot- 

The Land of the ' 

Mountain and land. Instead of the level or gently undu- 
the Flood. [ating fields, tilled like gardens, and the fine 

oaks and other trees here and there, giving the country a 
park-like aspect, there were bold hills on every hand, 
intensely green, without a tree as far as the eye could 
reach, and dotted only with white sheep. And, instead 
of the tame rivers, winding lazily throug'h wide meadows, 
such as we had seen everywhere in England, there were 
brawling brooks dashing down the ravines with an energy 
that made them fit symbols of the strenuous activity of 
the race v^^hose land we were entering. Nothing in a 
Scdttish landscape is more striking to the American eye 
than the uniform absence of trees on the hills and moun- 
tains. There are some forest-clad mountains and ravines, 
The Trossachs, for instance, as readers of Scott will 
remember, but in most cases there are only grass, ferns, 
and heather. This has the effect of throwing the shape of 
the mountains into much sharper outline to the eye than 
is the case with our American mountains, with their dense 
forests. 

If we had had the choosing of the conditions under 
which we should enter Scotland, we would not have 



FROM ENGLAND TO SCOTLAND. 69 

changed them in any particular. The afternoon sun was 
pouring golden light over the hills. The sky was as blue 
as that of Italy, save occasional masses of snow-white 
clouds towards the horizon — what one of our party calls 
"Williams' shaving soap clouds" — and the air, with its 
abundance of ozone, had an exhilarating and tonic effect 
such as I have never known anywhere else in midsummer. 
The Wizard of When wc left the train at Melrose, and took 
the North. ^p our quarters in the Abbey Hotel, we 
found that our good fortune continued, as our rooms 
looked right down upon the lovely ruins, and, as we sat 
watching them, the moon rose slowly over the Tweed, so 
that we had the opportunity to obey literally the poet's 
counsel in the Lay of the Last Minstrel — 

"If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright. 
Go visit it by the pale moonlight." 

To one who, like myself, regards Sir Walter Scott as the 
greatest novelist that ever lived, the opportunity to visit 
his home at Abbotsford, and his grave at Dryburgh a 
second time, and to drink in the exquisite beauty of the 
Tweed Valley at this point, is one to be thankful for 
indeed. 

Scott was a reactionary and a royalist, a Tory politi- 
cally, and a toady socially. He had an unreasoning rev- 
erence for kings and courts. He never was in sympathy 
with his countrymen in their long and bloody, but finally 
successful, sitruggle against the tyranny of the church 
and the state. In Old Mortality, and elsewhere, he slan- 
dered the heroic Covenanters, who won the freedom of 
Scotland. In Woodstock and elsewhere, he caricatured 
Cromwell and the heroic Puritans, vv^ho won the freedom 
of England. But, with all this, he never wrote anything 
dirty or degrading, like so much of our latter day fiction. 



70 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

He uniformly exalted bravery, and purity, and honor. 
Nor should it ever be forgotten that towards the close 
of his life, when he was overwhelmed by the disaster that 
befell the publishing house with which he was connected, 
and when he was thus plunged from independence and 
affluence into poverty and debt, he gave the world a 
splendid object lesson of personal honesty, by setting to 
work, in his old age, to discharge his obligations by 
continuous, laborious, exhausting work with his pen. He 
succeeded, but the effort cost him his life. He has given 
a larger amount of innocent and wholesome pleasure to 
the reading world than any other writer that ever lived. 
The unceasing stream of pilgrims to his home at Abbots- 
ford is but one of many indications of his unwaning popu- 
larity. 

Edinburgh at last ! No. 4 AthoU Crescent. 

Temporary ° . 

Residence in It was delightful to Settle down here, m our 
Auid Reekie. rented apartments, after long toil at home 
and long travel abroad, for a real rest, with just enough 
walking and hill-climbing daily in and around the city to 
give us a keen appetite for our meals. Round the bowl of 
yellow Scotch earthenware, in which our oatmeal porridge 
was served every morning, ran these lines from Burns : 

"Some hae meat that canna eat, 
And some wad eat that want it. 
But we hae meat an' we can eat, 
So let the Lord be thankit." 

And, as our appetites sharpened more and more, with 
the snell air of the German Ocean, and the abundant 
exercise on the heath-clad hills, and the exemption from 
wearing responsibilities, we entered more and more fully 
into the sentiment. 

By the way, the famous definition given by Dr. Samuel 
Johnson, in his Dictionary, runs thus, "Oats: A grain, 



FROM ENGLAND TO SCOTLAND. 71 

which in England is generally given to horses, but in 
Scotland supports the people." "Aye," said a Scotchman, 
when he heard it, "and see what horses they have in 
England, and what men we have in Scotland." Dr. John- 
son, who, by the way, owes his immortal fame to a Scotch- 
man, affected a dislike for Scotland, and said, among 
other uncomplimentary things, that the only good road in 
Scotland was the road that led to England. 

Our feeling is exactly contrary to that, and we are so 
charmed with what a good friend of mine calls "God's 
country north of the Tweed," its wonderful beauty, its 
matchless romance, its heroic history, the thronging mem- 
ories of its unsurpassed services to the causes of religion, 
Hberty, and letters, that we shall find it difficult to tear 
ourselves away, and take the road to England at all. 

But before undertaking to say anything of the vast 
and fascinating themes just mentioned, let me set down, 
in the remaining space of this letter, my impressions of 
certain features of the present-day customs of the Scot- 
tish people in their public worship. 

Public Worship In a- number of particulars the church 
In Scotland. usagcs among Presbyterians in England 
and Scotland differ from ours in America. It is the uni- 
versal custom, when entering a pew at the beginning of 
the service, to bow for a moment or so in silent prayer. 
Likewise, at the close of the service, when the minister 
pronounces the benediction upon the standing congrega- 
tion, all the people bow again in silent prayer before 
leaving the church. They then rise, and withdraw in a 
quieter and more reverential manner than is usual with 
us. In America it is not infrequently the case that the 
moment the minister says "Amen," at the close of the 
benediction, the organist pulls out all the stops of his 
instrument, sweeps the keyboard with might and main, 



72 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

and fills the building with a crashing tempest of sound, 
apparently a very lively march, not to say a waltz, to the 
jubilant strains of which the people move down the aisles, 
while, instead of the subdued greetings that seem more 
suitable to the sanctuary, they are straining their voices to 
make themselves heard over the uproar of the music. 
Organ, Choir and Evcu in Scotlaud, howcver, the custom of a 
Congregation, rather lively postlude from the organ as the 
people are retiring is growing, as in Free St. Georges, 
Edinburgh, which has the best organist I have heard in 
Great Britain, Mr. Hollins. He is blind, but I have never 
heard a man pour such melody from an organ, or lead a 
singing congregation more judiciously and effectively 
with an instrument. At times he leaves the organ quite 
silent in the midst of the hymn, beating time with his 
hand, and throwing out the voices of the people them- 
selves. The organ, as he uses it, is not a crutch for a lame 
congregation to lean on, but a vaulting pole for an active 
one to spring with. And the singing is magnificent. 
Happy the church with two ministers such as Dr. Alex- 
ander Whyte and the Rev. Hugh Black, and an organist 
such as Mr. Hollins ! Little wonder that the great build- 
ing is crowded to the doors at every service, and that if 
one wishes to be sure of a seat he must come a half hour 
before the time for the service to begin. This is quite easy 
for us to do, as the apartments which we have occupied 
for a month are but a few doors above the church. The 
church music in Scotland is generally far superior to ours 
in America. Solos and quartettes are almost unknown. 
The choirs are large, and sit in front of the congregation, 
just under the pulpit, and regard it as their business, not 
so much to display their talents in rendering difficult 
choir pieces as to lead the congregation in this important 
part of the worship of God. And the people sing, gen- 



FROM ENGLAND TO SCOTLAND. 73 

erally and heartily, rolling up to heaven a great volume 
of praise. I am struck with the fact that the Scotch 
Presbyterians have continued to use some of the most 
majestic and uplifting of the ancient hymns, such as the 
Te Deum, which we in America have in many places 
ceased to use, substituting for these great hymns of the 
ages the ephemeral jingles which make up too large a part 
of our so-called "Gospel Hymns." There is more both 
of dignity and variety of the right sort in the Scottish 
church music, secured by the free use of close metrical 
versions of the Psalms, paraphrases of other parts of 
Scripture, and anthems of the best type — all sung, mark 
you, by the whole congregation, and not by the choir 
only. 

Bibles in There is another thing about the Scotch 

The Churches, churches that I would like to see introduced 
into every church in America, and that is the use of the 
Bible by the people. A book-board is affixed to the back 
of every pew, running the whole length of it, and on this 
are laid a sufficient number of hymn-books and Bibles for 
all the people in the pew behind. When the preacher is 
about to read his Scripture lesson (there are always two 
at the morning service, one from the Old Testament, and 
one from the New), he announces the book and chapter, 
then pauses a minute while the people turn to the place, 
and, as he reads, they follow. So, too, when he announces 
his text. It is an excellent custom. It would be difficult 
to overstate the value of it. It is not unconnected with 
the fact that the Scotch people, as a whole, know more 
about the Bible than any other people in the world. 

The International System of Sunday-school Lessons 

has done more to promote knowledge of the Bible than 

any other system ever generally used since the modern 

Sunday-school came into existence, notwithstanding the 

6 



74 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

sweeping and indiscriminating strictures made upon it by 
some good brethren of late. But that system is certainly 
capable of improvement. One of the unfortunate results 
charged to the use of the lesson sheets of the International 
series is the neglect of the Bible itself." The children, it is 
said, do not bring their Bibles with them, and do not 
become familiar with them, as a whole, in the Sunday- 
school. It is too true in many cases. But are not their 
seniors equally indifferent about having Bibles in the 
regular service? How can ministers expect to bring 
about the desired revival of expository preaching unless 
they can get Bibles into the hands of the people during 
the service? Suppose that, like the Scotch, we had an 
adequate supply of Bibles as a regular par't of the equip- 
ment of our churches and Sunday-schools, would not this 
difficulty about the neglect of the Bible, which so many 
charge to the use of the lesson leaves, be effectually met ? 
Why should there not be at least as good a supply of 
Bibles in a church as of hymn-books ? Never were Bibles 
so cheap as now. 



CHAPTER XL 
Some English and Scotch Preachers. 

Edinburgh, August 25, 1902. 

I ONCE received a letter from the late Rev. Dr. 
William S. Lacy, saying that he had been trying to 
make use of a certain work in one of the departments of 
theological study, and asking if I could suggest some- 
London thing "less fearfully jejune," an expression 
Preachers. which I havc cvcr since regarded as a mas- 
terpiece of characterization. The first sermon I heard in 
Europe, preached in a cathedral, in 1896, by a clergyman 
of the English Church, reminded me of it, for it gave me 
an intense craving for something ''less fearfully jejune." 
One of my ministerial companions remarked that it was 
about such a disccurse as one would expect from a mem- 
ber of the junior class in Union Seminary, which I 
thought was rather hard on the juniors. The other five 
sermons that I heard from ministers of the Church of 
England that year, preached respectively by Canon Hol- 
land, Dean Farrar, Dr. Wace, Rev. H. R. Haweis, and 
Mr. Gray, of Heidelberg, were certainly not jejune, what- 
ever else may be said of them. At Heidelberg we had 
the good fortune to meet Prof. Gildersleeve, of Baltimore, 
who is quite at home in the German university towns, and 
who was very kind to us in every way. He took us to the 
English Church there. Mr. Gray is a quiet, thoughtful, 
and edifying preacher — the right kind of man, I should 
say, for a community of that sort. Canon Holland — a 
man of far more freshness and vigor — preached in St. 
Paul's, and, though powerfully built, and with a resonant 



^6 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

and well-managed voice, could be heard by only a small 
portion of the large congregation. It is said that the late 
Canon Liddon, the foremost preacher of the English 
Church in his time, broke himself down prematurely by 
the extraordinary exertions he made to project his voice to 
the limits of the great crowds which gathered in that vast • 
building to hear him. I have an eccentric friend in New 
England who calls the cathedrals "Gothic devils," because 
they hinder the preaching of the gospel. St. Paul's is 
not Gothic, of course, but it is worse, perhaps, in point of 
acoustics than any Gothic church whatsoever. 

We had the singular good fortune, in 1896, 
to hear Dean Farrar one evening in West- 
minster Abbey in a discourse which displayed, to the best 
possible advantage, the exceeding opulence of his rhetoric. 
He was trying to raise money for the restoration of Can- 
terbury Cathedral in a manner worthy of its approaching 
thirteen hundredth anniversary, and his discourse was a 
review of the work of the English Church and the Eng- 
lish nation during these thirteen centuries. What a com- 
bination of man and subject and place that was! The 
most rhetorical eminent preacher of the day, discussing 
with all the exuberance of his splendid diction such a sub- 
ject as "England," ecclesiastical and civil, for the last 
thirteen hundred years, in such a place as Westminster 
Abbey, surrounded by the tombs and statues of England's 
mighty dead, the wearers of her crown, and the posses- 
sors of her genius, her soldiers, and sailors, and statesmen, 
her painters, and poets, and philosophers, and preachers — 

"Those dead but sceptered sovereigns 
Whose spirits still rule us from their urns." 

The rich music, the soft light, the dim arches, the 
white statues, the stirring theme, the sympathetic voice, 



ENGLISH AND SCOTCH PREACHERS. -jy 

the luxuriant rhetoric — as the preacher referred, for in- 
stance, to "the sea which England has turned from an 
estranging barrier into an azure marriage ring for the 
union of the nations" — all conspired to make a unique 
impression. Dean Farrar's ornate style cloys on the taste 
sometimes when one reads his books, but when listening 
to his sermons it was not so. He was a very effective 
preacher, and, in the notable discourse to which I have 
just referred, he did not once overlay his thought too 
thickly with glittering verbiage. As for the other parts 
of the service I have only to say again that it is an un- 
speakable pity that a noble service like that of the Church 
of England (in which, as to its essence, all evangelical 
people can heartily unite) should be so commonly made a 
mere matter of mechanical routine, and artificial and 
absurd recitation. 

Mr. Haweisand Mr. Hawcis lookcd like a small edition of 
Dr. wace. the late Henry Ward Beecher — long hair, 
smooth face, large mouth, but with a peculiar, penetrating 
voice, and an abrupt, jerky manner. He was unconven- 
tional and racy to the last degree, and cut a good many 
"monkey shines" in the pulpit, which were all the more 
startling because of his elaborate white clerical vestments 
— such as resting his elbow on the desk, with his chin in 
his hand, for the space of five minutes, talking all the time 
as fast as Phillips Brooks, except for the peculiar "ah! 
ah!" which he interjected between sentences from time to 
time, as if unable to find the word he wanted — tben letting 
himself down, and hanging over the pulpit on his arm- 
pits, with his arms in front and his body behind. His 
sermon didn't have anything to do with his text, so far as 
I could see. He was a Broad Churchman, as broad as 
Dean Stanley. In fact, he was like the dog of which the 
train man said, in answer to an inquiry as to the dog's 



78 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

destination, "I don't know, an' 'ee don't know, an' no- 
body don't know. 'Ee's et his tag." 

Dr. Wace, in whom I was interested as one of the 
stoutest knights who have recently measured lances with 
the agnostics, preached a well written sermon, in a dull 
and lifeless way, to a handful of people at Lincoln's Inn 
Chapel. But we should not forget that there are many 
Presbyterian ministers who, as one of our secretaries of 
foreign missions once said, "carry a load of dogmatic 
theology into the pulpit, and dump it on the people, labor- 
ing all the time under the delusion that in so doing they 
are preaching the gospel." 

Spurgeon, Parker Somc ycars ago a child was asked, "Who 
and Hughes. ig the Prime Minister of England?" and 
replied, not unnaturally, "Mr. Spurgeon." That Spurgeon 
has been called up still higher, but in the great Metropoli- 
tan Tabernacle, which he built in London, thousands of 
people still gather Sunday after Sunday to hear the gospel 
preached by his son and successor, the Rev. Thomas 
Spurgeon. Of course, he cannot bend the bow of Ulysses. 
But, for that matter, there is no preacher living who can. 
Still he is a clear, earnest, effective preacher. We were 
at the opposite end of the church from him, but heard 
every word distinctly. 

Another dissenting minister, who continues to draw 
great crowds in London, is Dr. Joseph Parker, and he is 
probably the ablest preacher in the city, though on the 
day I first heard him, in 1896, he was so indistinct in his 
utterances at times that I found it almost impossible to 
follow him. There was an air of self-importance about 
him which I trust was only apparent. We heard him 
again the other day, when he occupied his pulpit for the 
first time after a long illness. He was quite feeble, and 
there were only occasional brief flashes of the volcanic 



ENGLISH AND SCOTCH PREACHERS. 79 

fires which used to flame and thunder through his 
preaching. 

I heard the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes also, the leading 
Methodist preacher of London, in a faithful and striking 
exposition of Haggai, an excellent expository sermon, just 
what I did not expect from him, as he has at times been 
charged with sensationalism. 

The Moravians, as is well known, lead the whole 
Christian world in zeal and liberality in the cause of 
Foreign Missions. At the Moravian chapel in Fetter 
Lane we heard a clear and helpful sermon from Mr. 
Waugh, the minister in charge. After the service he 
kindly showed us all through the Mission House, the 
centre of that unique propaganda which, with com^para- 
tively small resources, has given the pure gospel to so 
many remote and needy portions of the globe, and set 
the pace for all the churches in the work of carrying out 
the Great Commission. This chapel has some associa- 
tions with John Wesley; and, remembering the obliga- 
tions under which he lay to these earnest, evangelical 
Christians of the Unitas Fratrum, and the part since 
played by the great Methodist Church in the evangeliza- 
tion of the world, we felt that the Moravian Mission 
House was an appropriate place in which to recall the 
character and services of that rightly venerated epoch- 
maker and man of God who said, "My parish is the 
world." 

I heard a number of rich sermons from Dr. John 
Hunter, Gipsy Smith, Dr. Thornton, Rev. R. J. Campbell, 
and Mr. Connell. But the strongest, most spiritual and 
most conforting sermon I beard in London was preached 
by the Rev. J. Monro Gibson, D. D., pastor of St. John's 
Wood Presbyterian Church. That also was an expository 
sermon, as the best preaching so often is. 



8o A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

The only other man of mark whom I heard 
in the metropolis was General Booth, organ- 
izer, leader, and absolute monarch of the Salvation Army, 
an old man of spare frame, with shaggy, grisled hair and 
beard. His voice is not a good one, but he commands 
perfect attention, and his sermon, which was evidently 
well thought out, and which, if I remember aright, had but 
one undignified remark in it, showed the true nature of 
sin, and laid hold of the conscience with power. When 
we entered Exeter Hall, which was already nearly full of 
people, we saw on the platform a band of sixty musicians, 
in scarlet uniforms, leading the multitude with violins, 
cornets and drums, in a hymn sung lustily to the tune of 
"Auld Lang Syne." When the General came on the plat- 
form a few minutes later, they received him with a cheer. 
His sermon was followed by the usual uproarious pro- 
ceedings. With these, of course, I have no sympathy, nor 
with the absolute despotism of General Booth, but the 
Salvation Army has done a vast deal of good among "the 
submerged tenth." The census taken this year by the 
London News shows, however, that the Salvation Army 
is on the decline in that city, and the reason assigned for 
it is the lack of a body of trained preachers. 

But Scotland is the land of preachers. The greatest 
Scotchman that ever lived was a preacher, and to him, 
John Knox, Scotland is more indebted for what she is 
to-day than to any other man. 

What Sir "The Scotch, it is well known, are more 

Walter Said, remarkable for the exercise of their intellec- 
tual powers than for the keenness of their feelings ; they 
are, therefore, more moved by logic than by rhetoric, and 
more attracted by acute and argumentative reasoning on 
doctrinal points than influenced by the enthusiastic ap- 
peals to the heart and to the passions, by which the popu- 



ENGLISH AND SCOTCH PREACHERS. 81 

lar preachers in other countries win the favor of their 
hearers." So wrote Sir Walter Scott, and no doubt there 
is truth in it; but we must not underestimate the quick- 
ness and depth of their feehngs. It was an apparently 
hard-natured Scotchman of our own day who wrote the 
following more balanced estimate, "It's a God's mercy 1 
was born a Scotchman, for I do not see how I could ever 
have been contented to be anything else. The little, 
plucky, dour nation, set in her own ways, and getting 
them, too, level-headed and shrewd, and yet so lovingly 
weak, so fond, so led away by song or story, so easily 
touched to fine issues, so real, so true." Carlyle said 
Burns was the seolian harp of nature against which the 
rude winds of adversity blew, only to be transmuted in 
their passage into heavenly music. But no people without 
tender and strong feelings could have produced or ap- 
preciated such a poet as Burns. (By the way, I was 
astonished to discover, in 1896, that there were more 
than thirty thousand visitors annually to the birthplace of 
Burns, as against only twenty thousand to the birthplace 
of Shakespeare.) Moreover, no people without the right 
kind of feeling, and plenty of it — aye, and of enthusiasm, 
too — could have accomplished what Scotland has done. 
With a rigorous climate and a small country, much of it 
v/ild and untillable mountain and moor, and with fewer 
people in the whole country than in the city of London, 
Scotland — 

"On with toil of heart and knees and hand, 
Through the long gorge to the far light hath won 
Her path upward and prevailed," 

and to-day she wields an influence in the world out of all 
proportion to her population and resources. In fact, the 
Scotch are in many respects the greatest people of modern 
times. 



82 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

But I have wandered from my subject, 

Dr. Marcus Dods. , • i o i i i • j i 

which was Scotch preachmg and preachers. 
I heard four eminent men in Edinburgh, on my first visit 
there six years ago — Prof. A. B. Davidson, Prof. Marcus 
Dods, Dr. Alexander Whyte, and Dr. George Matheson. 
Prof. Davidson's voice, manner and style were much 
better adapted to a small class-room, with its detailed 
linguistic and exegetical methods, than to popular preach- 
ing in a large church. But if there was some disappoint- 
ment in regard to the preaching of the learned and famous 
author of the Hebrew grammars, and the father of the 
whole liberal, not to say radical, movement in Biblical 
Criticism, which has swept all Scotland into its vortex, 
there was none in regard to that of his brilliant colleague. 
Dr. Dods. Many of my readers are familiar with the late 
Dr. Henry C. Alexander's high estimate of Dr. Dods' 
work on New Testament Introduction, which he used as a 
text-book in Union Seminary, and with the general ex- 
cellence of his luminous and suggestive commentaries, 
though some of them are unfortunately marred by the 
obtrusion of views which are not altogether satisfactory. 
But probably few readers, even of his best books, would 
have expected from him a sermon so sane, and sound, and 
spiritual as that which I heard from him. It was fully 
written, and very quietly read, with absolutely no action, 
and with a modest and even diffident manner, but before 
he had uttered half a dozen sentences, the originality and 
power of the thought, and the freshness and vigor of the 
language, laid the hearer under the spell of a master, and, 
as he proceeded, first with keen analysis and irrefutable 
argument, and then with those considerations which can 
never be adduced save by a man who has had experience, 
who knows sin, and struggle, and salvation, your sense of 



ENGLISH AND SCOTCH PREACHERS. 83 

the preacher's power was succeeded, or rather accom- 
panied, by a sense of his sympathy, and you were ready 
to accompany him to his high practical conclusion, and 
left the church assured that he had, under God, given you 
a real and abiding spiritual uplift. 
Dr. George The Only Other man who impressed me 

Matheson. deeply, ou my former visit to Edinburgh, 
was Dr. Matheson. He is antipodal to Prof. Dods in his 
style of preaching. He is blind, as you know, and was 
led in from the vestry to the pulpit, a large man, with 
gray hair and beard, and a ruddy and radiant face, de- 
spite his sightless eyes, as though he walked continually 
in the white vision of the Invisible. His short, fervent, 
pointed prayers seemed to put every earnest hearer into 
sensible communion with the Father of our spirits, and 
his sermon on the great disappointments and mysteries 
of life was most satisfying and comforting, and was de- 
livered with rare animation and unction, the rich fancy 
and glowing language justifying the remark made to me 
afterwards by an eminent Scotchman, that Matheson was 
a poet as well as a preacher. I must add that some of my 
friends who went to hear him afterwards, on the ground 
of my enthusiastic recommendation, were disappointed, 
saying that his exegesis was illegitimate, and that he 
treated his text after the manner of Origen and the Alle- 
gorizers. But we must remember that even Spurgeon 
was often guilty of that. This does not excuse it, of 
course. It only shows that a man may sometimes do it, 
and yet be a great preacher. 
Dr. whyteand Dr. Whyte, of Free St. George's, is reck- 

Mr. Black. oncd by many the ablest preacher in Edin- 
burgh. I was in his church on my former visit to Scot- 
land, when he preached a deeply moving sermon in con- 



84 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

nection with a communion service. Unfortunately for us, 
he was absent from the city during the whole of our stay 
this time. But his brilliant young associate, the Rev. 
Hugh Black, leaves one no ground for complaint as to the 
quality of the preaching in Edinburgh in the summer. 
He is a very highly cultivated man, and an original and 
suggestive preacher, but with no special advantages of 
manner. He is slender, pallid, nervous, with a rather 
pleasing voice in its lower tones, but of limited range, 
breaking if he attempts to raise it. This shuts him out 
from some of the best oratorical effects. But what he 
lacks in voice and manner he makes up in richness of 
matter, and finish of style. He is well known as the 
author of Friendship and Culture and Restraint, two 
books which have had a wide circulation in America. 
We have made his church our regular place of worship, 
and have been drawn away from it only occasionally by 
the desire to hear such well-known veterans as Dr. Mc- 
Gregor, of St. Cuthbert's Established Church, and Dr. 
Hood Wilson, the retiring pastor of Barclay Free Church. 
This last, by the way, is a curious, but rather striking 
stone building, with the most hideous interior I have ever 
seen. It is a night-mare of bad taste. 

We have heard at other times Prof. Orr, author of 
various works of value in the department of Dogmatic 
Theology, the Rev. P. Carnegie Simpson, of Glasgow, 
author of The Fact of Christ, and the Rev. Thomas 
Burns, F. R. S. E., author of a unique and sumptuous 
work on Old Scottish Communion Plate. 
The Inevitable To Mr. Bums I am indebted for an intro- 
subject. duction to Prof. Sayce, of Oxford, and for 

a delightful hour at tea with the famous archaeologist and 
author in his house at Edinburgh, where he spends most 



ENGLISH AND SCOTCH PREACHERS. 85 

of the summer. He generally lives on a houseboat on the 
Nile in winter, and the weather in Edinburgh this sum- 
mer has been such as to make him long for that house- 
boat, and that soft Egyjz^tian climate more than ever. 
When we reached the city a month ago, we found much 
the same kind of weather that greeted Mary Queen of 
Scots on her return from France, and of which John 
Knox wrote as follows, "The very face of heaven did 
manifestlie speak what comfort was brought to this coun- 
try with hir — to wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness and all 
impiety — for in the memorie of man never was seen 
more dolorous face of the heavens than was at her arryvall 
. . . the myst was so thick that skairse micht onie 
man espy another; and the sun was not seyn to shyne 
two days befoir nor two days after." We had mists a 
plenty, but it was the cold weather and the rain that inter- 
fered most with our plans. It actually did rain nearly 
every day, and often four or five times a day, not mere 
showers, but drenching rains. In fact, the kind of 
weather we had nearly all the time, not only in Edinburgh, 
but throughout Scotland and England, gave us a keen 
appreciation of the following story of the London weather 
which we find in the Manchester Guardian: 

"The scene was a Strand omnibus. A leaden sky was 
overhead, the rain poured down uncompromisingly, mud 
was underfoot. A red-capped Parsee, who had been sit- 
ting near the dripping driver, got down as the conductor 
came up. "What sort o' chap is that,' asked the driver. 
'Don't yer know that,' answered the conductor. 'Why, 
that's one o' them Indians that worship the sun !' 'Wor- 
ships the sun?' said the shivering driver. 'I suppose 
'e's come over 'ere to 'ave a rest !' 

"This recalls the reply given on one occasion by an 
Eastern potentate to Queen Victoria, who asked him 



86 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

whe'ther his people did not worship the sun. 'Yes, your 
Majesty,' said the Oriental, 'and if you saw him you 
would worship him also.' " 

However, if I begin to write about Scotch weather, I 
shall never get back to my proper subject, which is Scotch 
preaching. 



CHAPTER XII. 
Echoes of a Spicy Book on Scotland. 

Edinburgh, August 26, 1902. 

THE mention of St. Cuthbert's, where we heard an 
excellent coronation sermon by Dr. McGregor, re- 
minds me of the prayer offered in St. Cuthbert's by the 
Rev. Neill McVicar, in 1745, just after the Young Pre- 
unique Prayer for tender had wou the battle of Prestonpans. 
Prince Charlie. ^ mcssagc was scnt to the Edinburgh min- 
isters, in the name of "Charles Prince Regent," desiring 
them to open their churches next day as usual. McVicar 
preached to a large congregation, many of whom were 
armed Highlanders, and prayed for George II., the reign- 
ing monarch, and also for Charles Edward, the Young 
Pretender, in the following terms, "Bless the king ! Thou 
knowest what king I mean. May the crown sit long upon 
his head ! As for that young man who has come among 
us to seek an earthly crown, we beseech thee to take him 
to thyself, and give him a crown of glory !" 

One of our pleasant excursions, of which we have 
made many since coming to Edinburgh, was to the field 
of Prestonpans, where the Young Pretender won his de- 
lusive victory, a field made familiar to many by the vivid 
description in Waverley. An aged tree, now supported 
and braced by iron rods and wires, is pointed out as that 
under which the Pretender stood during part of the en- 
gagement. Under this tree, in the tall wheat, overlooking 
the peaceful fields and the shining sea, our photographers 
insisted that a picture should be taken of some of the 
party, weary and dusty, and I fear untidy as we were. 



88 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Half a mile away, and within a few feet of the railway, 
stands the monument to Col. Gardiner, who was killed in 
this battle, and of whom Scott gives such a striking 
account in the first of his immortal romances. 
Church-going But there I go again, instead of finishing 
in Edinburgh, the subjcct of church services. In Kate 
Douglas Wiggin's sparkling volume, entitled Penelope's 
Progress, there is an amusing description of the perplexity 
of a young woman from America, on noticing from her 
window the great crowds of people on the streets of Edin- 
burgh on Sunday morning, her speculations as to the 
cause — "Do you suppose it is a fire?" — and her amaze- 
ment at discovering that they were all going to church. 
And truly the Scotch people are great church-goers. No- 
thing like it is ever seen on our side of the ocean, except 
in the predominantly Scotch cities of Canada. 

"I have never seen such attention, such concentration, 
as in these great congregations of the Edinburgh 
churches. As nearly as I can judge, it is intellectual 
rather than emotional ; but it is not a tribute paid to 
eloquence alone, it is habitual and universal, and is 
yielded loyally to insufferable dullness when occasion 
demands. 

"When the text is announced, there is an 

TheBibleB. .,.,,,,,. . , 

mdescnbable rhythmic movement forward, 
followed by a concerted rustle of Bible leaves; not the 
rustle of a few Bibles in a few pious pews, but the rustle 
of all of them in all the pews — and there are more Bibles 
in an Edinburgh Presbyterian Church than one ever sees 
anywhere else, unless it be in the warehouses of the Bible 
Societies. 

"The text is read twice clearly, and another rhythmical 
movement follows, when the books are replaced on the 
shelves. Then there is a delightful settling back of the 



A SPICY BOOK ON SCOTLAND. 89 

entire congregation, a snuggling comfortably into corners, 
and a fitting of shoulders to the pews — not to sleep, how- 
ever; an older generation may have done that under the 
strain of a two-hour Svearifu' dreich' sermon, but these 
church-goers are not to be caught napping. They wear, 
on the contrary, a keen, expectant, critical look, which 
must be inexpressibly encouraging to the minister, if he 
has anything to say. If he has not (and this is a possi- 
bility in Edinburgh, as it is everywhere else), then I am 
sure it is wisdom for the beadle to lock him in (the 
pulpit) lest he flee when he meets those searching eyes. 
"The Edinburgh sermon, though doubtless 

The Sermon. . , . , . . , , 

softened m outlme m these later years, is 
still a more carefully built discourse than one ordinarily 
hears outside of Scotland, being constructed on conven- 
tional lines of doctrine, exposition, logical inference, and 
practical application. Though modern preachers do not 
announce the division of their subject into heads and sub- 
heads, firstlies and secondlies and finallies my brethren, 
there seems to be the old framework underneath the ser- 
mon, and every one recognizes it as moving silently below 
the surface; at least, I always fancy that as the minister 
finishes one point and attacks another tAie younger folk 
fix their eagle eyes on him afresh, and the whole congre- 
gation sits up straighter and listens more intently, as if 
making mental notes. They do not listen so much as if 
they were enthralled, though they often are, and have 
good reason to be, but as if they were to pass an exami- 
nation on the subject afterwards; and I have no doubt 
that this is the fact. 

"The prayers are many, and are divided, ap- 

ThePrayers. \ "',., , ^' , ,, . . 

parently, like those of the liturgies, into 
petitions, confessions, and aspirations, not forgetting the 
all-embracing one with which we are perfectly familiar 
7 



90 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

in our native land, in which the preacher commends to 
the Fatherly care every animate and inanimate thing not 
mentioned specifically in the foregoing supplications. It 
was in the middle of this compendious petition, 'the lang 
prayer,' that rheumatic old Scotch dames used to make a 
practice of 'cheengin' the fit,' as they stood devoutly 
through it. 'When the meenister comes to the "ingath- 
erin' o' the Gentiles," I ken weel it's time to change legs, 
for then the prayer is jist half dune,' said a good sermon- 
taster of Fife. 

"The organ is finding its way rapidly into 
the Scottish kirks (how can the shade of 
John Knox endure a 'kist o' whistles' in good St. Giles?), 
but it is not used yet in some of those we attend most fre- 
quently. There is a certain quaint solemnity, a beautiful 
austerity, in the unaccompanied singing of hymns, that 
touches me profoundly. I am often carried very high on 
the waves of splendid church music, when the organ's 
thunder rolls 'through vaulted aisles,' and the angelic 
voices of a trained choir chant the aspirations of my soul 
for me ; but when an Edinburgh congregation stands, and 
the precentor leads in that noble paraphrase — 

"God of our fathers, be the God 
Of their succeeding race," 

there is a certain ascetic fervor in it that seems to me the 
perfection of worship. It may be that my Puritan ances- 
tors are mainly responsible for this feeling, or perhaps 
my recently adopted Jenny Geddes is a factor in it ; of 
course, if she were in the habit of flinging fauldstules at 
Deans, she was probably the friend of truth and the foe 
of beauty, so far as it was in her power to separate them." 
Jenny Geddes Ah! ycs. Jenny Geddes. Of course, we 
and her Stool, j^^^g ^ point of attending service frequently 



A SPICY BOOK ON SCOTLAND. 91 

in St. Giles, where that redoubtable assailant of "the 
papists and their apists" hurled her memorable missile. 
I trust the story is well known to many of my readers, 
especially our young people, but perhaps all are not 
familiar with the extremely racy version of it written bv 
the late Professor Stuart Blackie, one of the most bril- 
liant and versatile men of the age, and given to me by a 
kinswoman of his, whose charming hospitality I once had 
the privilege of enjoying for two weeks ; so I will embody 
that version of it in my letter. 

The Song of Mistress Jenny Geddes. 
Tune: "The British Grenadiers." 

Some praise the fair Queen Mary, and some the good Queen Bess, 

And some the wise Aspasia beloved by Pericles ; 

But o'er all the world's brave women, there's one that bears the 

rule, 
The valiant Jenny Geddes that flung the three-legged stool. 

Chorus : With a row dow, at them now — 
Jenny, fling the stool ! 

'Twas the 23rd of July in the 1637, 

On Sabbath morn, from high St. Giles the solemn peal was given ; 

King Charles had sworn that Scottish men should pray by printed 

rule, 
He sent a book, but never dreamt of danger from a stQol. 

Chorus : With a row dow, yes I trow, 
There's danger in a stool. 

The Council and the Judges, with ermined pomp elate, 
The Provost and the Bailies, in gold and crimson state, 
Fair silken vested ladies, grave Doctors of the School, 
Were there to please the king and learn the virtue of a stool. 

Chorus : With a row dow, yes I trow, 
There's virtue in a stool. 



9^ A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

The Bishop and the Dean cam' in, wi' mickle gravity, 

Right smooth and sleek, but lordly pride was lurking in their e'e, 

Their full lawn sleeves were blown and big like seals in briny 

pool. 
They bare a book, but little thought they soon would feel a stool. 

-Chorus : With a row dow, yes I trow, 

They'll feel a three-legged stool. 

The Dean, he to the Altar went, and with a solemn look. 
He cast his eyes to heaven and read the curious printed book; 
In Jenny's heart the blood upwelled, with bitter anguish full, 
Sudden she started to her legs, and stoutly grasped the stool. 

Chorus : With a row dow, at them now — 
Firmly grasp the stool ! 

As when a mountain wildcat springs on a rabbit small, 
So Jenny on the Dean springs with gush of holy gall — 
"Wilt thou say mass at my lug, ye popish-puling fool? 
Ho ! no !" she said, and at his head she flung the three-legged 
stool. 

Chorus : With a row dow, at them now — 
Jenny, fling the stool ! 

A bump ! a thump ! a smash ! a crash ! Now, gentlefolks beware ! 
Stool after stool, like rattling hail, came tirling thro' the air, 
With "Well done, Jenny ! Bravo, Jenny ! That's the proper 

tool! 
When the Deil will out and shows his snout, just meet him with 

a stool." 

Chorus : With a row dow, at them now — 
There's nothing like a stool. 

The Council and the Judges were smitten with strange fear, 
The ladies and the Bailies their seats did deftly clear. 
The Bishop and the Dean went in sorrow and in dool, 
And all the popish flummery fled when Jenny showed the stool. 

Chorus : With a row dow, at them now — 
Jenny, fling the stool ! 



A SPICY BOOK ON SCOTLAND. 93 

And thus a radiant deed was done by Jenny's valiant hand, 

Black prelacy and popery she drove from Scottish land, 

King Charles, he was a shuffling knave, Priest Laud a meddling 

fool, 
But Jenny was a woman wise, who beat them with a stool. 

Chorus : With a row dow, yes I trow. 
She beat them with a stool. 



The Disruption Of coursc, too, wc visited St. Andrew's 
in 1843. Church, in the newer part of the city, on the 

other side of the great, picturesque ravine which divides 
the old town from the new, because it was the scene of 
another epoch-making event in the ecclesiastical history 
of Scotland, viz., the Disruption of 1843. Unable to 
abolish the patronage of livings, by which certain heritors 
or patrons could appoint any minister they wished to a 
vacant pastorate, without the consent of the congregation, 
Dr. Chalmers and his party decided to take a very bold 
step in order to preserve the freedom of the church. When 
the Assembly met in St. Andrew's Church, in the pres- 
ence of a great body of spectators, while a vast throng 
outside awaited the result with almost breathless interest, 
though not really believing that any large number of the 
ministers would relinquish their homes and salaries for the 
sake of a "fantastic principle/' all expectations were sur- 
passed when the Moderator, after reading a formal pro- 
test signed by one hundred and twenty ministers and 
seventy-two elders, left his place, and was followed first 
by Dr. Chalmers, and then by four hundred and seventy 
men, who marched in a body to Tanfield Hall, and there 
organized the General Assembly of the Free Church of 
Scotland. When Lord Jeffrey was told of it an hour 
later, he exclaimed, "Thank God for Scotland ! There is 
not another country on earth where such a deed could be 



94 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

done!" Well might the Scottish minister remind his 
American visitor of Lord Macaulay's remark that the 
Scots had made sacrifices for the sake of religious opinion 
for which there was no parallel in the annals of England. 
Many of my readers are familiar with the exceedingly 
impressive appearance of this Disruption Assembly, from 
the well-known engraving, a copy of which hangs in the 
Reading Room of the Spence Library, at Union Theo- 
logical Seminary, Richmond. 
. _ , , It would never do, when speaking of church 

A Sermon-taster ' ^ ° 

with a Nippy matters in Edinburgh, to omit Penelope's 
Tongue. account of her landlady's breezy comments 

on the different preachers. 

"It is to Mrs. McCollop that we owe our chief insight 
into technical church matters, although we seldom agree 
with her 'opeenions' after we gain our own experience. 
She never misses hearing one sermon on a Sabbath, and 
oftener she listens to two or three. Neither does she 
confine herself to the ministrations of a single preacher, 
but roves from one sanctuary to another, seeking the 
bread of life, often, however, according to her own ac- 
count, getting a particularly indigestible 'stane.' 

"She is thus a complete guide to the Edinburgh pulpit, 
and when she is making a bed in the morning she dis- 
penses criticism in so large and impartial a manner that it 
would make the flesh of the "meenistry' creep were it 
overheard. I used to think Ian Maclaren's sermon-'taster 
a possible exaggeration of an existent type, but I now see 
that she is truth itself. 

" 'Ye'll be tryin' anither kirk the morn ?' suggested 
Mrs. McCollop, spreading the clean Sunday sheet over the 
mattress. 'Wha did he hear the Sawbath that's bye ? Dr. 
A. ? Ay, I ken him ower weel ; he's been there for fifteen 
years and mair. Ay, he's a gifted mon — oif an' on !' with 



A SPICY BOOK ON SCOTLAND. 95 

an emphasis showing clearly that in her estimation the 
times when he is 'off' outnumber those when he is 'on.' 
. . . 'Ye have na heard auld Dr. B. yet?' (Here she 
tucks in the upper sheet tidily at the foot.) 'He's a 
graund strachtforrit mon, is Dr. B., forbye he's growin' 
maist awfu' dreich in his sermons, though when he's that 
wearisome a body canna heed him withoot takin' pepper- 
mints to the kirk, he's nane the less, at seventy-sax, a 
better mon than the new asseestant. Div ye ken the new 
asseestant? He's a wee bit finger-fed mannie, ower sma' 
maist to wear a goon ! I canna thole him, wi' his lang- 
nebbit words, explainin' and expoundin' the gude Book 
as if it had jist come oot! The auld doctor's nae kirk- 
filler, but he gi'es us fu' measure, pressed down an' rin- 
nin' over, nae bit pickin's like tha haverin' asseestant ; it's 
my opeenion he's no sound, wi' his parley voos and his 
clishmaclavers ! . . . Mr. C.?' (Now comes the shaking 
and straightening and smoothing of the first blanket.) 
'Ay, he's weel eneuch ! I mind ance he prayed for our 
Free Assembly, an' then he turned roun' an' prayed for 
•the Established, maist in the same breath — he's a broad, 
leeberal mon, is Mr. C. ! . . . Mr. D. ? Ay, I ken him 
fine ; he micht be waur, though he's ower fond o' the kit- 
tle pairts o' the Old Testament ; but he reads his sermon 
from the paper, an' it's an auld sayin'. If a meenister 
canna mind [remember] his ain discoors, nae mair can 
the congregation be expectit to mind it. . . . Mr. E. ? 
He's my ain meenister.' (She has a pillow in her mouth 
now, but though she is shaking it as a terrier would a 
rat, and drawing on the linen slip at the same time, she 
is still intelligible between the jerks.) 'Susanna says his 
sermon is like claith made o' soond '00 [wool] wi' a' gude 
twined thread, an' wairpit an' weftit wi' doctrine. Su- 
sanna kens her Bible weel, but she's never gaed forrit.' 



96 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

(To 'gang forrit' is to take the communion.) 'Dr. F. ? 
I ca' him the greetin' doctor. He's aye dingin' the dust 
cot o' the poopit cushions, an' greetin' ower the sins o' 
the human race, an' eespecially of his ain congregation. 
He's waur syne his last wife sickened an' shppit awa'. 
'T was a chastenin' he'd put up wi' twice afore, but he 
grat nane the less. She was a bonnie bit body, was the 
third Mistress F. ! E'nbro could 'a' better spared the 
greetin' doctor than her, Fm thinkin'. 

'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away accord- 
ing to his good will and pleasure,' I ventured piously, 
as Mrs. McCollop beat the bolster and laid it in place. 

'Ou ay,' responded that good woman, as she spread 
the counterpane over the pillows in the way I particu- 
larly dislike; 'ou ay, but whiles I think it's a peety he 
couldna be guidit !' " 

Scottish and Finally, I cannot refrain from quoting' 
American Frauccsca's account of the peppery conver- 

Repartee. satiou she had with the young Scottish min- 

ister with whom she was destined to fall in love. She 
returned from the dinner, at which she had met him, all 
out of sorts: 

"How did you get on with your delightful minister?" 
inquired Salemina. . . . "He was quite the handsomest 
man in the room; who is he?" 

"He is the Reverend Ronald Macdonald, and the most 
disagreeable, condescending, ill-tempered prig I ever 
met !" 

"Why, Francesca!" I exclaimed. "Lady Baird speaks 
of him as her favorite nephew, and says he is full of 
charm." 

"He is just as full of charm as he was when I met 
him," returned the girl nonchalantly; "that is, he parted 
with none of it this evening. He was incorrigibly stiff 



A SPICY BOOK ON SCOTLAND. 97 

and rude, and oh ! so Scdtch ! I believe if one punctured 
him with a hat pin, oatmeal would fly into the air !" 

"Doubtless you acquainted him, early in the evening, 
with the immeasurable advantages of our sleeping-car 
system, the superiority of our fast-running elevators, and 
the height of our buildings?" observed Salemina. 

"I mentioned them," Francesca answered evasively. 

"You naturally inveighed against the Scotch climate ?" 

"Oh ! I alluded to it ; but only when he had said that 
our hot summers must be insufferable." 

"I suppose you repeated the remark you made at 
luncheon, that the ladies you had seen in Princes Street 
were excessively plain?" 

"Yes, I did," she replied hotly ; "but that was because 
he said that American girls generally looked bloodless and 
frail. He asked if it were really true that they ate chalk 
and slate pencils. Was'n't that unendurable? I answered 
that those were the chief solid articles of food, but that 
after their complexions were established, so to speak, their 
parents often allowed them pickles and native claret to 
vary the diet." 

"What did he say to that?" I asked. 
" 'Oh !' he said, 'quite so, quite so' ; that was his in- 
variable response to all my witticisms. Then, when 1 
told him casually that the shops looked very small and 
dark and stuffy here, and that there were not as many 
tartans and plaids in the windows as we had expected, he 
remarked, that as to the latter point, the American season 
had not opened yet ! Presently, he asserted that no royal 
city in Europe could boast ten centuries of such glorious 
and stirring history as Edinburgh. I said it did not ap- 
pear to be stirring much at present, and that everything 
in Scotland seemed a little slow to an American ; that he 
could have no idea of push or enterprise until he visited a 



98 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

city like Chicago. He retorted that, happily, Edinburgh 
was peculiarly free from the taint of the ledger and the 
counting-house; that it was Weimar without a Goethe, 
Boston without its twang!" 

"Incredible!" cried Salemina, deeply wounded in her 
local pride. "He never could have said 'twang' unless 
you had tried him beyond measure !" 

"I dare say I did ; he is easily tried," returned Fran- 
cesca. "I asked him, sarcastically, if he had ever been in 
Boston. 'No,' he said, 'it is not necessary to go there! 
And while we are discussing these matters,' he went on, 
'how is your American dyspepsia these days — have you 
decided what is the cause of it?' " 

" 'Yes, we have,' said I, as quick as a flash ; 'we have 
always taken in more foreigners than we could assimi- 
late!' I wanted to tell him that one Scotsman of his type 
would upset the national digestion anywhere, but I re- 
strained myself." 

"I am glad you did restrain yourself — once," ex- 
claimed Salemina. 

And so on, with Francesca's characterization of the 
Forth Bridge as the national idol, her inability to tell 
which way to turn a drawing of it so as to make the bridge 
right side up, his asking her if doughnuts resembled pea- 
nuts, and his telling her he had heard that the ministers' 
salaries in America were sometimes paid in pork and 
potatoes, his comments on international marriages, and 
her conclusion, as she retired that night, "I doubt if I 
can sleep for thinking what a pity it is that such an ego- 
tistic, bumptious, pugnacious, prejudiced, insular, bigoted 
person should be so handsome!" 

That is an excellent little volume to give one an idea 
of the kind of international clashes that are continually 
occurring in Edinburgh nowadays. But we, being more 



A SPICY BOOK ON SCOTLAND. 99 

intent upon getting into the more ancient atmosphere of 
Scotland, give most of our evenings to the reading aloud, 
in the family circle, of Rob Roy, and the like, in prepara- 
tion for our proposed tour of the Highlands, while the 
older members of the party acquaint themselves afresh 
with the Heart of Midlothian, The Monastery, The Ab- 
bot, and the other works of the Wizard of the North, 
whose scenes are laid at or near "Edina, Scotia's darling 
seat." 



CHAPTER XIII. 
Is THE Scottish Character Degenerating? 

Edinburgh, August 27, 1902. 

OUR Stay in Edinburgh has come to an end. It has 
been a delightful month in spite of the weather. 
Claudius Clear says, "Edinburgh is so beautiful that, for 
love of her face, she is forgiven her bitter east winds," 
"Mine Own Ro- adding that "there is a keenness, a rawness, 

mantic Town." ^ chillincss in the air, which you do not find 
in South Britain." So there is, and yet we have been out 
of doors a great deal, and have threaded her streets and 
closes, and climbed her heights in every direction — Ar- 
thur's Seat, Salisbury Crags, Calton Hill, The Castle, 
Corstorphinc, The Braid Hills, The Pentlands — and 
made excursions to the Forth Bridge, Hawthornden, Ross- 
lyn, Duddingston (where the minister most kindly showed 
us, between showers, everything of interest in and around 
the little church in which Sir Walter Scott was once an 
elder), Craigmillar Castle, Musselburgh, North Berwick, 
Bass Rock (the dungeons of which were once filled with 
Covenanters, whose only offence was adhering to the form 
of religion which the king had bound himself by his coro- 
nation oath to maintain), Tahtallon Castle, with its mem- 
ories of Marmion, and Rullion Green, with its memories 
of the Martyrs, and, of course, within the city, Greyfriars 
Churchyard, The Grassmarket, Holyrood and the rest. 
What a wealth of beauty and history and romance ! 
The Seamy Side Yet there are some very criticizable things 

ofEdinburgh. about Edinburgh, such as the unseemly bill- 
ing and cooing of lovers of the servant class in public 



SCOTTISH CHARACTER. loi 

places, for instance the Princes Street Gardens, where 
they may be seen at almost any hour of the day embracing 
each other in the most unblushing manner, apparently 
oblivious of the passing multitude. There may be just as 
much of this going on in the parks of other cities, but the 
peculiar position of these lovely gardens in the great 
green hollow in the very centre of the city, in plain view 
of the most crowded streets, and the most popular hotels, 
makes this impropriety more obtrusive here than it is any- 
where else. 

But worse than this are the ever-present proofs of the 
poverty, wretchedness and degradation of great numbers 
of the people. The slums of Edinburgh are more con- 
stantly in evidence than those of any other city m the 
world. The reason for this is not that the slums are more 
populous or worse than those of other cities, but that the 
parts of Edinburgh which are of the greatest interest to 
visitors, viz., the High Street, from the Castle to Holy- 
rood, and the adjacent districts, where the great families 
once lived, and where the most memorable events of the 
city's history occurred, the parts made familiar to all 
readers by the writings of Sir Walter Scott and the his- 
torians of Scotland, have long since been abandoned by 
the better classes, and are now occupied by the poorest 
and most degraded. So that every reading person who 
visits Edinburgh is brought face to face, day after day, 
with all this squalor and misery ; and it is so different 
from what one naturally expects to find in Scotland, and 
especially in this ancient and wealthy seat of learning, 
that it makes a very strong impression upon the imagi- 
nation — an impression so strong that it is scarcely coun- 
terbalanced, even by long sojourn in the scrupulously 
clean residential sections, on either side of this filthy and 
festerirtg centre. 



102 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Cause of her Why should there be such a plague spot in 
Wretchedness, the heart of Edinburgh? The explanation 
cannot be found in any lack of native ability on the part 
of Scotchmen to overcome the conditions that bring about 
abject poverty. It is universally conceded that in the 
qualities which make for success in life the Scots are 
well-nigh unrivalled. Mr. Andrew Carnegie is a pre- 
eminent example, but the thrift of Scotchmen in general 
is a proverb.^ 

Nor can the explanation of the dire poverty and 
wre'tchedness seen in Scotch cities be found in their dis- 
regard of the Sabbath rest and the Sabbath worship, as 
in the case of some other European peoples, though there 
seems to be of late some relaxation of their rigid Sabba- 
tarianism. Their strictness in this matter has been the 
subject of many a good story. One is told of a little girl 
in Aberdeen, who brought a basket of strawberries to the 
minister's, very early Monday morning. 

"Thank you, my little girl, they are very nice," said 
the minister; "but I hope you did not pick them yester- 
day, for it was Sunday, you know." 

"No, sir," replied the child, "but," she added, with 
some dismay, "they were growing all day yesterday." 

A devout Scottish minister once stopped at a country 
inn, in the northern part of his native land, to pass the 
Sunday. The day was rainy and close, and toward night, 
as he sat in the little parlor of the inn, he suggested to his 
landlady that it would be desirable to have one of the 
windows raised, so that they might have some fresh air in 
the room. 

^December, 1903. — The Prime Minister of the British Empire 
is a Scotchman. The leaders of both parties in the House of 
Commons are Scotchmen. The Archbishop of Canterbury and 
the Archbishop of York, the two heads of the Church of England, 
are Scotchmen. These are specimen facts. 



SCOTTISH CHARACTER. 103 

"Mon," said the old woman, with stern disapproval 
written plainly on her rug-ged face, "dinna ye ken that ye 
can hae no fresh air in this hoose on the Sawbath?" 

Another is related by Dr. Thomas Guthrie, in his 
autobiography. It was Sunday morning, and Guthrie was 
preaching, away from home. After breakfast, he asked 
his host for a cup of hot water to shave with. "Whist, 
whist," was the response ; "if ye wanted hot water for 
your toddy, 'twould be all right ; but if this congregation 
kenned that ye called for water to shave with, there wad 
nae be a soul in the kirk to hear ye." 
The Curse of This last incident brings us in sight of the 
Strong Drink, ^j-yg explanation of Edinburgh's misery. 
The great curse of Scotland is drunkenness. The real 
cause of the deplorable change that seems to be taking 
place in the character of her people is intemperance. Mr. 
Charles E. Price, of the well-known firm of McVittie & 
Price, who is the prospective Liberal candidate for the 
Central Division of Edinburgh, in a recent address, made 
after a visit to our country, says he was struck with the 
general sobriety of the American people. He did not see 
eight persons drunk on the streets during his three 
months' tour, and he contrasts this showing with the 
gross drunkenness seen on the streets of Edinburgh. 
He quotes the startling figures in the letter of Lord Bal- 
four of Burleigh, to the Lord Provost of Glasgow, 
taken from the annual report of the Commissioners of 
Prisons, according to which the number of commitments 
during the twelve months, 1900-1901, was, for England, 
571 per hundred thousand of the population, and for 
Ireland, 793, and for Scotland, 1,402! That is, nearly 
twice as many for Scotland as for Ireland, and nearly 
three times as many for Scotland as for England. "Ah !" 
I said to myself sorrowfully, "whiskey again." Such 



104 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

was the comment of Mr. John A. Steuart, the Scottish 
author and social reformer, when tliis shocking official 
statement appeared in the newspapers ; and, referring to 
Lord Balfour of Burleigh's declaration, that the time has 
come when it is necessary to consider whether a large new 
prison should not be erected, he adds, "That is the com- 
mentary of your Secretary of State on the morality of ^he 
countrymen of John Knox." Mr. Steuart goes on to show 
that the national drink bill, direct and indirect, amounts 
to the enormous sum of £300,000,000. "Three hundred 
millions sterling and one hundred thousand human lives, 
that is the yearly expense of maintaining the publican. 
The South African war cost us altogether 20,000 lives; 
during the period it lasted the drink traffic cost us up- 
wards of 250,000, that is to say, for every soldier who 
died in South Africa, from wounds or disease, twelve 
men and women in Britain perished miserably from strong 
drink. Let Christian people think of it. . . . Nothing 
is more certain than this, that religion and the drink 
traffic cannot flourish together, and one of them is flour- 
ishing terribly now. ... If the church does not gird 
herself promptly and vigorously to dispose of the drink 
traffic, the drink traffic will assuredly dispose of the 
What Mr. Car- church." In an American journal I find the 
negie Thinks, statement that, in writing to Dr. T. L. Cuy- 
ler recently, sending him a generous contribution to the 
National Temperance Society, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, 
after expressing his deep interest in the temperance cause, 
added, "The best temperance lecture I have delivered 
lately was my offer of ten per cent, premium on their 
wages to all employees on my Scottish estates who will 
abstain from intoxicating liquors." 

Speaking still more recently, at an entertainment at 
Govan, Scotland, Mr. Carnegie said "he wished his coun- 



SCOTTISH CHARACTER. 105 

trymen would take to their hearts that the one blot upon 
the people of Scotland was that they often fell from true 
manhood through the use of intoxicating liquor. There 
was a saying in America that a totally abstaining Scots- 
man could not be beaten, and wherever a Scot has fallen, 
it was, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, the result 
of intemperance. Every Scotsman at home or abroad had 
in his keeping part of the honor of Scotland, and Scot- 
land having so much more honor per man than other 
lands, it followed that every Scot carried a greater load 
of honor than the man of other lands. He wished that 
every word of his to workmen in Scotland would cause 
them to reflect upon that, and to resolve that henceforth 
they would never disgrace either themselves or the land 
that gave them birth. The only defect of the Scot, com- 
pared with the man of other lands, was that of intemper- 
ance, which, however, he rejoiced to know, was steadily 
decreasing." 

A Lesser One Other ominous feature of present day 

Menace. conditious in Scotland I find referred to in 

the following clipping from a British journal: 

"In Edinburgh of late the Jesuits have been showing 
unwonted activity. Owing partly to the unsettling effect 
of Biblical criticism upon the average mind, and partly to 
some utterances by some of the leading ministers in the 
Scottish churches, the Society has evidently deemed the 
moment opportune for pressing the claims of Rome upon 
the Scottish people. In their spokesman. Father Power, 
who addresses a great gathering every Sabbath evening 
in the open, they have an instrument well fitted for their 
purpose. Of fine presence, manifest learning, and no 
mean orator, he is bound to make an impression on some 
minds. Here is one sentence from his last lecture. After 
referring to the utterance of a noted Scottish divine in 



io6 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

the General Assembly, reflecting on some passage in the 
Confession of Faith, he said, 'So that fundamental basis 
being removed (the Confession), the Presbyterian Church 
collapsed like a house of cards. And hence I say that the 
CathoHc Church has an opportunity, let us hope a God- 
given one, for entering the field once occupied by our late 
lamented sister.' " 

But he would be a sanguine man, indeed, who could 
believe that the people of Scotland generally would ever 
become Roman Catholics. For one thing, there is too 
much printing there. For the Vicar of Croyden was a 
true prophet when he said, in the early days of the Re- 
formation, "We must root out printing, or printing will 
root out us." 



CHAPTER XIV. 
Stirling, the Lakes, and Glasgow. 

Glasgow, September i, 1902. 

FROM Stirling Castle we revelled in the view which 
many consider the finest in Scotland, embracing, as it 
does, both Lowland and Highland scenery. We drove 
to the towering, but rather top-heavy Wallace Monument, 
on Abbey Crag, and climbed its winding stone stairway, 
for the sake of another look at that smiling landscape, and 
a nearer view of the scene of Wallace's victory over 
Surrey at Stirling Bridge, in 1297. In one of the rooms 
of this great monument we gazed reverently on the hero's 
sword with a thrill of our boyhood enthusiasm over Scot- 
tish Chiefs, remembering that "the sword which looked 
heavy for an archangel to wield was light in his terrible 
hand." The statue of Wallace in front of the building 
looked like an old friend, because of our familiarity with 
the replica of it in Druid Hill Park, presented to the city 
of Baltimore by Mr. William Wallace Spence. Of course, 
we drove, too, to "Cambuskenneth's fane," and the field 
of Bannockburn, where the "bore stone" may still be seen. 
Memorials of ^^t the place that interested us most at Stir- 
the Martyrs. ji^g was the Old Grcyfriars Churchyard, 
adjoining the Castle, with its monuments of John Knox, 
Alexander Henderson, Andrew Melville, and especially 
James Renwick and Margaret Wilson. During our stay 
in Edinburgh we had read and talked much of the martyrs 
of Scotland, those glorious men and women who had died 
for Christ's crown and covenant in "the killing time," — 
those heroic ministers, nobles, and peasants, male and 



io8 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

female, who to the number of eighteen thousand had laid 
down their lives rather than submit to the tyranny and 
popery of the Stuarts. We had visited repeatedly Grey- 
friars Churchyard at Edinburgh, where the Covenant was 
signed, and where many of the martyrs who were be- 
headed in the adjoining Grassmarket are buried. The 
last of those who "kissed the Red Maiden" here was the 
youthful and gifted James Renwick. His statue at Stir- 
ling represents a mere stripling indeed. Not far from 
Renwick's statue stands the most beautiful of all the 
monuments of the Covenanters, the snow white group of 
Margaret and Agnes Wilson, and the figure of an angel 
standing by them. The inscription is as follows : 

MARGARET, 

Virgin Martyr of the ocean wave, with her 
likeminded sister, 

AGNES. 

Love many waters cannot quench. 

God saves His chaste impearled one in Covenant true. 
O Scotia's daughters ! earnest scan the page, 

And prize this flower of grace — blood-bought for you. 

Psalm ix: 19. 

Through faith Margaret Wilson, a youthful maiden, 
chose rather to depart and be with Christ than to 
disown His holy Cause and Covenant, to own Eras- 
tian usurpation, and conform to prelacy enforced by 
cruel laws. Bound to a stake within flood mark of 
the Solway tide, she died a martyr's death on nth 
May, 1685. 

I had had the satisfaction, on my former visit to Scot- 
land, of seeing many of the places around which the hero- 
ism of the Covenanters has thrown imperishable renown, 




MONUMENT TO MARGARET WILSON, STIRLING. 



STIRLING, THE LAKES, AND GLASGOW. 109 

Bothwell Bridge, Drumclog, Ayrsmoss, Wigtown (where 
a noble monument to Margaret Wilson and Margaret 
McLachlan crowns the highest hill and overlooks the 
sad sands of Wigtown, which all readers of The 
Men of the Moss Hags will remember), also the 
little Duchrae (where, by the way, Mr. S. R. Crockett 
was born), and Earlstoun Castle on Ken Water, and San- 
quhar. At Dumfries one morning, I had eaten my break- 
fast in the room where Charles Edward, the Pretender, 
the last of the Stuarts to curse and trouble the united 
kingdom, had dined with his staff, the night before his 
final withdrawal northward ; and at Sanquhar, m the 
afternoon of the same day, I had eaten my dinner close to 
the granite shaft which marks the spot where Richard 
Cameron and the other twenty heroes sat their horses on 
that memorable day, when they unfurled the blue silken 
banner, with its inscription in letters of gold "For Christ's 
Crown and Covenant," and flashed their swords in the 
sunlit air, and declared themselves independent of the 
tyrannical and perjured house of Stuart — one of the sub- 
limest actions in the history of human freedom — and the 
twenty men won, though they themselves perished in the 
conflict. As I thought of it all, and how much it meant 
for the civil and religious liberty of our own country, I 
had taken off my hat, and, standing there in the street, 
had silently thanked God for the gift to Scotland and the 
world of such men as Richard Cameron and William Gor- 
don and James Renwick. 

I had a very pleasanit note the other day from Mr, 
S. R. Crockett, the novelist, in which he was kind enough 
to say, 'Tf you are in Galloway, I shall be glad indeed to 
see you," and in which he expressed a lively interest in 
the work of the "Covenanters" in our church. In speak- 
ing of The Men of the Moss Hags, he says, "I put a great 



no A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

deal of faithful work into it, but that very quality some- 
what marred the dramatic element. I think of trying 
again with a book on Peden — a red-hot one this time — 
not trying to hold the balance, but going straight for all 
persecutors and sitters-at-ease in the Covenant Zion." 

Those who go to The Trossachs by way of 
Scenery of Callaudcr, as most tourists do, and as I did 
Scotland. ^^ ^^^ formcr visit, miss 'the finest scenery 

of this region. Readers of The Lady of the Lake natur- 
ally wish to go by Coilantogle Ford, Clan-Alpine's out- 
most bound, but by doing so they miss not only the finest 
mountain views of the district, but also the scenes of Rob 
Roy, on the upper waters of the Forth. So this time we 
went by rail from Stirling to Aberfoyle, spent the night 
at the delightful Bailie Nicol Jarvie Hotel, antipodal in 
every respect to the wretched inn of the clachan described 
by Sir Walter, and took the coach over the mountains 
next morning for the Trossachs and Loch Katrine. The 
beauty of the mountains, seen in this way, with their rocks 
and ferns and heather all around us, and the glittering 
lakes far below us, was a revelation even to one who had 
been through the district on the other route. At the Loch 
Katrine pier we took the little steamer Sir Walter Scott, 
and passing Ellen's Isle, were soon favored with another 
memorable view. Surely Ben Venue was never lovelier 
than it was that day, with the sunlight and shadow alter- 
nating on its rugged sides. The Stronachlachar Hotel, 
at the foot of the lake, is another excellent place of enter- 
tainment. We could not tear ourselves away at once, so 
after luncheon we rowed on the lake, and climbed on the 
rocks, and gathered the heather till late in the afternoon. 
Then we took coach for Inversnaid. We thought we had 
seen it rain in Scotland. We had not. Those downpours 
Vv'hich had so often drenched us in and around Edinburgh 



STIRLING, THE LAKES, AND GLASGOW, in 

were mere showers compared to the floods which fell upon 
us on that drive to Inversnaid. The best opportunity I 
ever had to observe, in perfect comfort, the effect of a 
heavy rain on Highland scenery was on a steamboat ride 
up Loch Tay some years ago. From the windows of the 
saloon we could see everything on both sides. All the 
trickling burns, swollen by the rain, had become full and 
foaming streams, and, dashing down the mossy moun- 
tains, gave them the appearance of immense slopes of 
green velvet, striped from top to bottom with ribbons of 
silver. But on this drive from Stronachlachar to Inver- 
snaid we were too busy trying to keep ourselves dry to 
take account of the effect of the rain on the scenery. We 
were much more concerned about its effect upon our- 
selves. But on reaching the hotel we hung up our drip- 
ping wraps, and were quite comfortable again in a few 
minutes. Next morning was fine. We walked to Rob 
Roy's cave in the tumbled rocks overlooking the water. 
We climbed the hills above Inversnaid Falls. Some of 
the party rowed across the lake to the Arrochar moun- 
tains. From every point of view we were enchanted with 
the loveliness of Loch Lomond. It is the largest and 
most beautiful of the Scottish lakes. We left Inversnaid 
reluctantly, after a too brief stay of a day and a half, and 
steamed down to Balloch. Taking the cars there for 
Glasgow, we soon came in sight of the gray stone mansion 
of Lord Overtoun, standing high and clear to the view 
on our left. The sight of it rendered the senior member 
of the party reminiscent again, and he told the others of 
the garden party given there to the Pan-Presbyterian 
Council in 1896. 

About 850 people had come by rail from Glasgow to 
Dumbarton on a specially chartered train, and were con- 
veyed the two or three miles from there to Overtoun in 



112 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

breaks, thirty-five in number. Over the door of the man- 
sion ran the chiselled words, "Let everything that hath 
breath praise the Lord." The host and Lady Overtoun 
received the delegates in the hall. After passing through 
the elegant apartments on the first floor, they dispersed 
over the beautiful grounds where ices were served at 
various places, and ten pipers of the celebrated Black 
Watch, in their picturesque Highland costume, marched 
up and down the lawn, playing their national instrument, 
one which, with its "tangled squeaking," as Hawthorne 
calls it, has always seemed to me more picturesque than 
musical. At four o'clock the guests, to the number of 
nearly one thousand, all assembled in the great marquee 
which had been erected on the lawn, and were seated at 
tables for refreshments, after which they were welcomed 
by Lord Overtoun in a most cordial speech, to which 
responses were made by Dr. Roberts, Dr. Blaikie, Dr. 
Hoge, Rev. John McNeill and others, and at about six 
o'clock we all went back to Glasgow, fully agreed that this 
was far and away the most elaborate and elegant enter- 
tainment we had ever seen. 

One of the raciest men I met at Glasgow, on that 
occasion, was the Rev. John McNeill. I had the good 
fortune, with some other friends, to travel in the same 
compartment with him the day we went to Lord Over- 
toun's Garden Party. Noticing the river through the car 
window, he began to speak of the filth of the Clyde below 
Glasgow, and then naturally enough of the Chicago river, 
which is probably the filthiest ditch on this planet, and 
quoted the remark he had made while there, that Peter 
could have walked on the Chicago river without faith. 
This led him to speak of exaggerations in general, one 
especially in which a local Scotch orator indulged when 
offering the congratulations of his community to the 



STIRLING, THE LAKES, AND GLASGOW. 113 

owner of three or four small coasting vessels when he was 
about launching another one. After "disporting himself 
in the empyrean," as Dr. Alexander used to say of such 
sky-scrapers, this bailie wound up with the statement that 
"the sails of your ships whiten the universal seas." The 
local minister was the next speaker, but after such a burst 
of eloquence as the foregoing, his remarks were, of 
course, very tame, so much so that the bailie who had 
covered himself with glory turned to another bailie sit- 
ting next to him, and said, "Bailie, mon, some o' them 
that have never been to college can make a better speech 
than them that have been through the hale corrycoliwn!" 
Another example of unconscious Scotch humor, re- 
lated, I think, in Lockhart's Life of Scott, was that of the 
pastor of the small islands of Cumbrae, near the mouth of 
the Clyde, who was accustomed to pray that the Lord 
would "bless Great Cumbrae and Little Cumbrae and the 
adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland." Still an- 
other was that of the simple Highlanders on the estates 
of the great Presbyterian nobleman, the Duke of Argyll, 
who when the Duke's son, the Marquis of Lome, married 
the daughter of Queen Victoria, said, "The Queen must 
be a great woman if her daughter could marry the son of 
McCallum More." 

The City of "Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of 

Glasgow. i\iQ word." From time immemorial that has 

been the motto of this stately city, now the second in size 
in Great Britain, numbering some nine hundred thousand 
souls. It should, therefore, be no surprise that there are 
two hundred and seventy-five Presbyterian churches here. 
"Glasgow is the largest Presbyterian city in the world, 
whether it be measured by the number of churches, of 
communicants, or of aggressive work done in the cause 
of Christ." It was in Glasgow that the first missionary 



114 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

society, to send the gospel to the heathen world, was 
formed in Scotland. Glasgow was also the principal scene 
of the great home mission enterprise of Dr. Chalmers. 
Thus, as Prof. Lindsay says, Glasgow has taken the lead 
in the two greatest characteristics of modern evangelical 
Presbyterianism — missions to the heathen, and to the 
lapsed and drifting population at home. Besides what is 
raised by the churches of the city, Glasgow spends an- 
nually more than seven hundred thousand dollars in the 
support of various charitable institutions. For instance, 
over nine hundred orphan children are cared for in the 
''homes," all the money for buildings and daily bread 
being sent in, in ansvv^er to prayer. Eighty-eight services 
are held on Sabbath forenoons for non-churchgoing lads 
and girls, superintended by two thousand monitors and 
workers. The Boys' Brigade took its rise in Glasgow. 
There are ten thousand young men enrolled as members 
of the Young Men's Christian Association. These bare 
statements will give some idea of the religious activities 
of this great Presbyterian city, and of its suitableness as a 
rallying centre, in 1896, for the three hundred repre- 
sentatives of that vast army of more than twenty million 
people of God, who, in every nation under heaven, march 
under the blue banner, constituting the largest Protestant 
Church in the world. 

Glasgow is, moreover, an ancient seat of learn- 
ing, and a great centre of commerce. For five hun- 
dred years its University has shed light over Scot- 
land, and other countries as well. As for primary edu- 
cation, the official report says, "it is a rare thing now 
to find a child in the city, over ten or eleven years of age, 
who cannot read and write. Its art galleries, museums, 
music, lectures, its magnificent municipal buildings 
erected at a cost of two million six hundred thousand 



STIRLING, THE LAKES, AND GLASGOW. 115 

dollars, its sanitary arrangements, under the influence of 
which the rate of mortality is steadily decreasing, its 
water system, which, at a cost of seventeen million five 
hundred dollars, has brought an abundant supply of pure 
water from Loch Katrine through thirty-five miles of 
mountainous country — all are worthy of the second city 
of the kingdom. And, as everybody knows, Glasgow is 
the place where "the stately ocean greyhounds" are built. 
Fifty-five million dollars have been expended in "turning 
what was once a little salmon stream into one of the 
greatest navigable highways of the world." In 1768, the 
Clyde, at low water, was one foot deep, where now it is 
twenty-four feet. What is it that has given this venerable 
Presbyterian city this proud position, next to London? 
"Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the word." 
The Old It is said that the word "Glasgow" comes 

Cathedral, from "Glcscu," gray mist. It deserved its 
name when we arrived there on the 30th of August, 1902, 
and it continued to deserve it throughout our stay. The 
fog was so heavy and dense that one felt almost as if it 
could be sawn into slabs. 

I can testify further that the city deserved its name 
also on- the 17th of June, 1896, when the delegates 
to the Sixth General Council of the Reformed Churches 
Throughout the World Holding the Presbyterian System, 
gathered in the Barony Church, and marched through a 
cold rain, across the wide paved square, to the ancient 
cathedral, where the opening sermon was to be preached. 
This majestic building, novi^ more than seven hundred 
years old, is thus described by Sir Walter Scott in the 
nineteenth chapter of Rob Roy, "The pile is of a gloomy 
and massive, rather than of an elegant, style of Gothic 
architecture ; but its peculiar character is so strongly 
preserved, and so well suited with the accompaniments 



ii6 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

which surround it, that the impression of the first view 
was solemn and awful in the extreme." As Andrew Fair- 
service said to the hero of that stirring story, whom Scott 
represents as addressed by Rob Roy from behind one of 
the pillars in the crypt, "It's a brave kirk — nane o' yer 
whigmalieries and curliewurlies and opensteek hems about 
it — a solid, weel-jointed mason-wark, that will stand as 
long as the world, keep hands and gunpowder aff it." 
And, indeed, it looks as if it would. On the crest of the 
hill, in the adjacent necropolis, stands a splendid Doric 
column surmounted by a statue of John Knox. 
The Most Emi '^^^ preeminence of Scotland in Theology, 
nent Citizen Philosopliy, and Medicine has long been 
of Glasgow. recognized the world over. But it may not 
be known to all of my readers that the most eminent 
scientist now living is also a resident of this country, a 
citizen of Glasgow — Lord Kelvin. 

In the Regalia Room of Edinburgh Castle, on my way 
to Glasgow in 1896, I had the pleasure of meeting, for the 
first time, one of the most intellectual young men that the 
South has produced since the war, Professor Woodrow 
Wilson, of Princeton University, a former fellow student 
at Davidson College of one of my fellow-travellers at 
that time. He told us he was on his way to Glasgow, too, 
for the purpose of representing Princeton in the celebra- 
tion of Lord Kelvin's jubilee. This veteran professor, 
who thus completed fifty years of service as a teacher in 
the University of Glasgow, and who, by the way, like so 
many other epoch-makers, is a Scotch-Irishman, has long 
been recognized as one of the most eminent scientists of 
modern times, and the greatest of all electricians. As 
Professor William Thomson, he first won renown by the 
wonder which he wrought in annihilating space by en- 
abling us to telegraph across the Atlantic ocean, for it was 



STIRLING, THE LAKES, AND GLASGOW. 117 

he who solved the difficulty which, in 1856, threatened to 
defeat all the plans of the late Cyrus W. Field just as he 
seemed about to realize his gigantic dream of uniting two 
continents. The signals passing through a long sub- 
marine cable were found to "drag" so much as to make it 
practically useless. Thomson discovered the law govern- 
ing the retardation, and invented the "mirror instrument," 
by which all the delicate fluctuations of the varying cur- 
rent could be interpreted. "So sensitive is the arrange- 
ment that on one occasion a signal was sent to America 
and back through two Atlantic cables with the current 
from a toy battery, made in a silver thimble with a drop 
of acidulated water and a grain of zinc." By means of 
Thomson's magical apparatus, on August 17, 1858, this 
message was flashed from shore to shore, "Europe and 
America are united by telegraph. Glory to God in the 
highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." For 
this success he was knighted. In 1892, after many other 
successes, he was raised to the peerage. The submarine 
telegraph is not the only invention which connects his 
name with the sea. By substituting piano-forte wire for 
the old-fashioned rope, he made it possible to measure 
quickly and accurately the depth of water at any spot 
under a moving ship. When Dr. Toule was visiting Prof. 
Thomson, he noticed a bundle of this piano-forte wire, 
and, inquiring what it was for, was informed by Thom- 
son that he intended using it for "sounding purposes." 
"What note?" innocently inquired Toule, to which Thom- 
son promptly replied, "The deep C." But Lord Kelvin's 
most valuable aid to navigation is the adjustable compass, 
which bears his name, and which is now used on every 
first-class ship in the world. 

So numerous and useful are his inventions that there 
is an establishment at Glasgow devoted solely to the man- 



ii8 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

ufacture of his patents, and employing nearly two hun- 
dred highly skilled workmen, and a staff of electricians. 
His home, in the precincts of Glasgow University, was the 
first house in the world to be lighted with electricity. It 
is not strange, then, that we found the whole city doing 
him honor on our arrival in 1896, and scores of scholars 
convened to offer the congratulations of other institutions 
in every part of the world. 

Yesterday we had the pleasure of hearing a very 
thoughtful and striking sermon from the Rev. P. Carnegie 
Simpson, author of The Fact of Christ, a book which in a 
very short time has gained a deservedly wide circulation. 
I am constrained to believe that, generally speaking, Scot- 
tish ministers have more intellectual ability and better 
theological furnishing than those in America. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Oban, Iona, and Staffa. 

"For Oban is a dainty place; 

In distant lands or nigh lands, 
No town delights the tourist race 
Like Oban in the Highlands." 

Caledonian Canal, September 3, 1902. 

THE fog was so thick the morning- we steamed down 
the ill-smelHng- Clyde, and out through the Kyles of 
Bute, that we could see nothing whatever, and had to 
content ourselves as best we could with the tantalizing 
recollections of one member of the party, who on a former 
occasion had made an excursion with some five hundred 
other persons, delegates to the Glasgow Council and their 
friends, on the elegant steamer. Duchess of Hamilton, up 
Loch Long, Loch Goil, and the Kyles of Bute, with alter- 
nating showers and sunshine, getting charming views of 
the lovely scenery that abounds about the Firth of Clyde. 
But the atmosphere lightened somewhat as we steamed 
through the Crinan Canal, and as we approached Oban 
it cleared completely, and gave us full opportunity to 
enjoy the glorious scenery on every hand. 

Situated near the southern terminus of the Caledonian 
Canal, and also not far from the western isles, and being 
the starting point of all excursions through this, the 
wildest and most romantic region of Scotland, Oban is 
called "the Charing Cross of the Highlands." 
Rude Seas '^^^^ ^^^^ cxcursiou Undertaken by our party 

off the West from Oban was the famous one to Staflfa 
and lona, and in this we were so fortunate 



I20 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

that we almost forgot our disappointment at the Kyles 
of Bute. Frequently the sea is so rough in this windy 
region that passengers cannot be landed on the islands. 
It was so on the day before our trip, and also on the day 
after it. It seemed to us rough enough on the day we 
made the trip, and the captain was doubtful about landing 
us until the very last. But the boats from shore put out 
and came alongside, swinging on the waves five or six 
feet up, and then quickly down again, so that it was 
necessary for us to step in promptly, one by one, just at 
the moment when they rose to the highest point. It 
looked dangerous, but nobody backed out. It looked still 
more dangerous after we were in the tossing boats, with 
the great green waves running high all around us. I 
think several of the party had doubts whether they would 
ever again set foot on land, and there were thankful 
hearts and deep sighs of relief when, after the visit to 
Staffa, we all got safe back on the steamer. The danger, 
however, was more apparent than real. The boats were 
staunch, strongly manned, and handled with consummate 
skill. 

lonaand We visitcd lona first, a small island and 

Coiumba. homcly, but sacred and memorable forever 
as the place where the presbyter abbot, Coiumba, the 
Apostle of Caledonia, and his twelve companions from 
Ireland, landed in A. D. 563, to begin that series of toil- 
some, but marvellously successful campaigns, which re- 
sulted in the evangelization of a large part of Scotland. 
The tomb of Coiumba is still shown in the ancient cathe- 
dral. For centuries lona was a part of the domain of the 
Duke of Argyll, but three or four years ago the late Duke, 
the author of The Reign of Law, presented the property 
to the Church of Scotland. Since that time the cathedral 
has been re-roofed and otherwise restored, so that now it 



OBAN, lONA, AND STAFFA. i^i 

presents a less desolate appearance than it did on my first 
visit a few years ago. lona was the burial place of the 
ancient Scottish kings. More than fifty of them lie in the 
cemetery, hard by the cathedral, in graves marked, for 
the most part, by ancient tombstones, with interesting in- 
scriptions. The last of these kings to be laid here was 
Duncan I., who was murdered by Macbeth about the 
middle of the eleventh century. Not far away stands 
Maclean's Cross, supposed to be the oldest in Scotland. 
It is one of three hundred and sixty lona crosses which 
are said to have once stood on the island, 
staffaand Half an hour from lona by the steamer is 

Fingai'sCave. Staffa. Staffa means the "isle of columns." 
It is of the same columnar basaltic formation as the 
Giant's Causeway in the north of Ireland, and was pro- 
duced by the same outpouring of lava that formed the 
Irish Causeway. We climbed along the irregular floor 
of perfectly formed polygonal columns, which fit each 
other with absolute exactness, though no two are alike. 
We stopped for a moment to sit down in Fingal's Wishing 
Chair, and then pushed on to see the most impressive of 
all these natural wonders — Fingal's Cave — which pene- 
trates the volcanic columns for a distance of two hundred 
and twenty-seven feet. 

"This stupendous basaltic grotto in the lonely Isle of 
Staffa remained, singularly enough, unknown to the outer 
world until visited by Sir Joseph Banks in 1772. As the 
visitors' boat glides under its vast portal, the mighty 
octagonal columns of lava, which form the sides of the 
cavern — the depth and strength of the tide which rolls 
its deep and heavy swell into the extremity of the vault 
unseen amid its vague uncertainty — the variety of tints 
formed by the white, crimson, and yellow stalactites which 
occupy the base of the broken pillars that form the roof, 
9 



122 A. YEAR IN EUROPE. 

and intersect them with a rich and variegated chasing — 
the corresponding variety of tint below water, where the 
ocean rolls over a dark red or violet-colored rock, from 
which the basaltic columns rise — the tremendous noise 
of the swelling tide mingling with the deep-toned echoes 
of the vault that stretches far into the bowels of the isle — 
form a combination of effects without a parallel in the 
world !" 

Sir Walter Scott's lines express the sentiment most 
proper to the place : 

"The shores of Mull on the eastward lay, 
And Ulva dark, and Colonsay, 
And all the group of islets gay 

That guard famed Stafifa round. 
Then all unknown its columns rose, 
Where dark and undisturbed repose 

The cormorant had found. 
And the shy seal had quiet home, 
And welter'd in that wondrous dome, 
Where, as to shame the temples deck'd 
By skill of earthly architect. 
Nature herself, it seem'd, would raise 
A minster to her Maker's praise! 
Not for a meaner use ascend 
Her columns, or her arches bend; 
Nor o'f a theme less solemn tells 
That mighty surge that ebbs and swells, 
And still, between each awful pause. 
From the high vault an answer draws. 
In varied tone, prolong'd and high. 
That mocks the organ's melody. 
Nor doth its entrance front in vain 
To old lona's holy fane, 
That Nature's voice might seem to say, 
'Well hast thou done, frail child of clay; 
Thy humble powers that stately .shrine 
Task'd high and hard — but witness mine !' " 



OBAN, lONA AND STAFFA. 123 

TheGraat The trip from Oban to Inverness, through 

Canal. ^he Caledonian Canal, with its alternating 

locks and lochs, and its mountain walls on either side, is 
one of the finest in the world in point of scenery. It was 
something of a surprise to us to find at Fort Augustus, 
half way up the canal, the Benedictine Order established 
in a magnificent group of buildings, which had been 
erected at a cost of four hundred thousand dollars, but we 
presently remembered that there had always been a Ro- 
man Catholic element in the Highlands, that this element 
had ardently supported the pretensions of Charles Edward 
Stuart to the British crown, and that Lord Lovat, the 
leading Roman Catholic nobleman of the region, had been 
executed for the treasonable part he took in that affair. 
In the Tower of London we had seen the block on which 
he was beheaded, with the print of the axe showing 
plainly in the wood. In 1876 the Lord Lovat of that 
time presented this splendid property to the Benedictines. 
Of Prince Charlie's career in this part of Scotland we 
shall have more to say in our next letter. 



CHAPTER XVL 
Inverness and Memories of Flora Macdonald, 

Perth, September 6, 1902. 

OUR farthest north on our European tour was Inver- 
ness, the capital of the Highlands, vVhich we reached 
from Oban by way of the magnificent route through the 
Caledonian Canal, and which we left by way of the rail- 
road that runs southwards through the battlefield of Cul- 
loden, where the Young Pretender was defeated, and the 
cause of the Stuarts finally overthrown in 1746. The 
town has twenty thousand people, is well built of substan- 
tial materials, a fresh-looking pink stone predominating, 
and is the cleanest city we have seen in Great Britain. It 
has a fine situation, its business portion occupying the 
more level ground on both sides of its broad, clear river, 
while handsome villas stretch along the terrace which 
rises above the valley. At a short distance from the town 
there rises, from the level plain on the riverside, a strik- 
ingly beautiful wooded hill, on the summit and sides of 
which the people of Inverness have made their ceme- 
tery, one of the loveliest of all the lovely cities of the 
dead. 

From elevated points, and especially from the Castle 
Hill in the midst of the town, one gets a very fine view 
of richly diversified scenery, comprising, besides river and 
firth and valley, a wealth of hills, some wooded and others 
gay with purple heather and green ferns. This central 
hill, on which the handsome castellated county buildings 
now stand, was the site of Macbeth's Castle, concerning 
which Shakespeare represents King Duncan as saying. 




STATUE OF FLORA MACDONAI.D — INVERNF,SS. 



INVERNESS AND FLORA MACDONALD. 125 

"This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air nimbly and 
sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses." Just 
in front of the buildings which now occupy this celebrated 
site stands a graceful statue of Flora Macdonald. She is 
represented as a comely young woman, with her left hand 
lightly holding her dress skirt, and her right raised as 
though shading her eyes, while she gazes intently across 
the water. A very finely executed Scotch collie at her 
side looks up into her face.^ 
^^ ^ Being a native of North Carolina, and hav- 

The Career ° ' 

of a Royal ing most plcasaut memories of the High- 
Adventurer. ^^^^ Scotch Communities of the Cape Fear 
country, and the fine old town of Fayetteville, where Flora 
Macdonald lived during a portion of her maturer life, I 
was delighted to be thus reminded that I was now so near 
the scenes connected with the romantic incidents of her 
younger days, when, at the peril of her own life, she saved 
the worthless life of Prince Charles Stuart, the Young 
Pretender to the British throne. 

Students of that period of English history, or readers 
of Waverly, that immortal romance, which, as the first 
venture of its then unknown author in this line of litera- 
ture, gave its name to the whole series of those unrivalled 
historical romances which were put forth thereafter in 
rapid succession by Sir Walter Scott, and which have 
given a greater amount of wholesome pleasure to the 
world of readers in general than any other series of books 
that were ever written — students of history and readers 
of Waverly, I say, will remember, that after the Pre- 
tender's delusive victory at Prestonpans, near Edinburgh, 

^ Three or four months after our visit to Inverness, I had the 
pleasure of meeting the sculptor of this striking statue, Mr. Alex- 
ander Davidson, of Rome, and of talking with him at large about 
the heroine of the Highlands. 



126 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

and his disappointment at the failure of the Roman Cath- 
olic population of western England to rise in support of 
his cause, he fell back to the northern part of Scotland, 
and there, on the desolate moor of Culloden, four miles 
from Inverness, he was overwhelmingly defeated by the 
Duke of Cumberland, and his army of devoted High- 
landers cut to pieces. Over that bloody field the star of 
the Stuarts, a race which had so long been a curse to 
Great Britain, sank to rise no more, and the Protestant 
succession has never since been seriously called in ques- 
tion. 

A Fugitive in The Pretender, with a few faithful friends, 
the Hebrides, flg^j through the wild couutry to the south- 
west, and, after many hardships and hairbreadth escapes, 
reached the Outer Hebrides, and was concealed in a cave 
there, on the wet and windy island of Benbecula. But 
the fact that he was on this island soon became known to 
the government, and then his position became perilous in 
the extreme. By sea and land every precaution was taken 
to prevent his escape, every road, pass and landing place 
being guarded, and the whole coast being patrolled by 
government vessels in such numbers that no craft, how- 
ever small, could approach or leave the island unobserved, 
except perhaps under cover of darkness by special good 
fortune, while some two thousand soldiers made diligent 
search on shore ; in addition to which a prize of one hun- 
dred and fifty thousand dollars was oiTered for his cap- 
ture. In this crisis of his affairs it was agreed that a final 
attempt for his rescue should be made through the agency 
of a young lady of the neighborhood, Miss Flora Mac- 
donald, then twenty-four years of age, two years younger 
than the Prince himself, but whose selection for his peril- 
ous office argues a prudence and strength of character far 
beyond her years. 



INVERNESS AND FLORA MACDONALD. 127 

A Woman This remarkable young woman was well 

to the Rescue, bom, being the granddaughter of the Rev. 
Angus Macdonald, known throughout the Isles as "the 
strong minister," on account of his extraordinary physical 
strength. She was also well bred, and well educated, 
having enjoyed not only the advantages of her own home, 
and of the other respectable families of her native island, 
but also the benefit of long residence in the home of her 
kinsman, Sir Alexander Macdonald, of Monkstadt, in the 
Island of Skye, and of three years in the Ladies' Seminary 
of Miss Henderson, at Edinburgh. Sir Alexander was 
loyal to the house of Hanover, and had refused to take 
any part in supporting the pretensions of Prince Charles. 
Flora also was indifferent to the claim of the Stuarts, and 
saved the Pretender's life out of pure compassion. In- 
deed, afterwards, when she had been released from her 
imprisonment at London on the charge of treason, and 
the Prince of Wales called on her and asked her, half 
jocularly, how she dared to assist a rebel against his 
father's throne, she answered with characteristic simplicity 
and firmness that she would have done the same thing for 
him had she found him in like distress. 
^ . . The plan adopted, and successfully carried 

Feminine r r > j 

Courage and out, for the cscapc of the Pretender from 
Resource. Benbccula to Skye was this : Our heroine, 
having expressed a strong desire to visit her mother, then 
living in Skye, procured a passport for herself and two 
servants from her stepfather, Captain Hugh Macdonald, 
who, though in command of a body of the King's militia 
on Benbecula, shared the general compassion for the 
beaten Prince, and the general desire that he might escape 
with his life. One of these servants was Neil Macdonald, 
a faithful, intelligent, and pretty well educated youth, 
who had spent several years in Paris, and, therefore, spoke 



128 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

French fluently, and who, after the adventures with which 
we are here concerned, followed the Pretender to France, 
and became the father of the celebrated Marshal Macdon- 
ald, Duke of Tarentum, one of Napoleon's great generals. 
The other, ostensibly an awkward and overgrown Irish 
girl, was in reality Prince Charles himself. With the 
principal member of the party thus disguised, and armed 
with the passport for use in case of need, these three, with 
a picked boat crew of six, set out on a dark night when the 
rain was falling in torrents, and, after an exceedingly 
tempestuous and perilous voyage, arrived safely in Skye, 
where the coolness, courage and resourcefulness of Flora 
Macdonald baffled the King's officers, overcame all diffi- 
culties, and eventually accomplished the desired end of 
getting the Pretender to the mainland, whence, after three 
months more of severe hardships, he got aboard of a 
French vessel, and so reached the continent. That he 
was utterly unworthy of the great service rendered him, 
is clearly shown by the fact, that though he lived for more 
than forty-two years after he parted with her on the beach 
of Portree, he never acknowledged, by letter or other- 
wise, the dangers to which she exposed herself in order to 
save his life. At his death his body was appropriately laid 
in St. Peter's Cathedral at Rome with the rest of his 
Romish kindred. 

Flora Macdonald Flora Macdonald's part in the escape of the 
as Prisoner. young Pretender could not long be con- 
cealed. As soon as it became known she was arrested, 
and taken on board one of the King's vessels, and by 
General Campbell sent to Dunstaifnage Castle, on Loch 
Etive, his note to the governor of the castle referring to 
her as "a. very pretty young rebel." After ten days of 
imprisonment there, she was taken to Leith, the port of 
Edinburgh, and placed on board the Bridgewater, where 



INVERNESS AND FLORA MACDONALD. 129 

she was detained for nearly three months, being lionized 
the while by the aristocracy and professional men of the 
Scottish metropolis in a way that would have turned a 
weaker head. An Episcopal clergyman of the place wrote 
of her as follows : 

"Although she was easy and cheerful, yet she had a 
certain mixture of gravity in all her behavior, which 
became her situation exceedingly well, and set her off to 
great advantage. She is of a low stature, of a fair com- 
plexion, and well enough shaped. One would not discern 
by her conversation that she had spent all her former days 
in the Highlands, for she talks English easily, and not at 
all through the Erse tone. She has a sweet voice, and 
sings well ; and no lady, Edinburgh-bred, can acquit her- 
self better at the tea-table, than what she did when in 
Leith Roads. Her wise conduct, in one of the most per- 
plexing scenes that can happen in life — her fortitude and 
good sense — are memorable instances of the strength of 
a female mind, even in those years that are tender and 
inexperienced." 

In November, 1746, the Bridge-water sailed, with our 
heroine and others, to London, where they were to stand 
trial on charges of treason. Her popularity, however, was 
so great, and public sentiment so strongly opposed to the 
infliction of any stern penalty upon a young and attractive 
woman for the performance of a self-sacrificing act of 
humanity, that, after a short confinement in the gloomy 
Tower of London, whose walls have enclosed so many 
heavy hearts in the course of the centuries, she was turned 
over to friends, who became responsible to the govern- 
ment for her appearance when demanded, and, after re- 
maining a state prisoner in this mitigated manner for some 
twelve months, she was set at liberty, under the Act of 
Indemnity of 1747. The first use she made of her freedom 



130 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

was to solicit as a special favor that her fellow-prisoners 
from the Isles should be given the same liberty as herself, 
and the request was granted, one of those thus released 
being her future father-in-law, Macdonald of Kingsburgh. 
Some three years after her return to her 

Her Marriage. . . , , , ... 

native islands, she was married, in 1750, to 
Allan Macdonald. Boswell, in his Journal of a Tour to 
the Hebrides, thus describes the man to whom our heroine 
yielded her heart and hand : 

"He was completely the figure of a gallant Highlander, 
exhibiting the graceful mien and manly looks which our 
popular Scotch song has justly attributed to that charac- 
ter. He had his tartan plaid thrown around him, a large 
blue bonnet with a knot of black ribbon like a cockade, a 
brown short coat, a tartan waistcoat with gold buttons, a 
bluish philibeg, and tartan hose. He had jet-black hair, 
tied behind, and was a large, stately man, with a steady, 
sensible countenance." 
^^ ^ It was in i??'^ that Boswell and Dr. Samuel 

She Entertains / / u 

Dr. Johnson Johnsou wcrc entertained at the hospitable 
and Boswell. ^^^^ ^^ ^j^^j^ Macdouald and his famous 

wife. The great lexicographer and moralist was delighted 
with his hostess and describes her as "a woman of middle 
stature, soft features, gentle manners, and elegant pres- 
ence." He asked her, as a special favor, to let him sleep 
in the bed which had been occupied by the unfortunate 
Prince, a request which she readily granted, adding, to 
his immense gratification, that she would also furnish him 
with the identical sheets on which the Prince had lain, 
and which, by the way, she kept till the end of her days, 
taking them with her to North Carolina and back, and in 
which, at her own request, her body was wrapped after 
her death. Before leaving the house next morning, Dr. 
Johnson laid on his toilet table a slip of paper containing 



INVERNESS AND FLORA MACDONALD. 131 

the pencilled words, Quantum cedat virtutihus aurum, 
which Boswell renders, "With virtue weighed, what 
worthless trash is gold." 

sh M V Through no mismanagement or extrava- 

to North gance of his own, but in consequence of 

Carolina. losscs incurred by his father, by the part he 

had taken in the Pretender's cause, Allan Macdonald had 
become seriously embarrassed, and so, in the hope of 
mending his fortune, he determined to emigrate to North 
Carolina, where many other families from Skye had 
already settled. Accordingly, in 1774, with his wife and 
their nine children, he sailed for Wilmington, and, after 
receiving various attentions there, whither the fame of 
his wife had preceded them, they went up the Cape Fear 
River to Cross Creek, now called Fayetteville, and after 
some months in Cumberland county, where they were 
regular worshippers in the Presbyterian Church, pur- 
chased a place on the borders of Richmond and Mont- 
gomery counties, which they named Ealliegray. 
... - ^ Their life in America was a sad one. Two 

Misfortunes 

in the New of their children died, a bereavement made 
the more trying to the mother because of 
the absence of her husband, whose duties as a military 
officer required his presence elsewhere. The Revolution- 
ary War was on the point of breaking out, and Governor 
Martin, seeing the honor paid to Allan Macdonald by the 
Highlanders, made him brigadier-general of a command 
of his countrymen, which became a part of the ill-fated 
army that was defeated by the American patriots at the 
battle of Moore's Creek. He was captured and com- 
mitted to Halifax jail, Virginia, as a prisoner of war. 
With misfortunes thickening around her, her husband in 
prison, her five sons away from home in the service of the 
King, her youngest daughter enfeebled by a dangerous 



132 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

attack of typhus fever, and her adopted country in the 
throes of war, Flora Macdonald resolved, on the recom- 
mendation of her imprisoned husband, to return to Scot- 
land, and, having obtained a passport through the kind 
offices of Captain Ingram, of the American army, she 
went to Wilmington, and later to Charleston, whence she 
sailed in 1779. 

During this voyage she had the last of her 

to Scotland notable adventures, in a sharp action be- 

andher twecu the vcssel ou which she sailed and a 

French privateer. She characteristically 

refused to take shelter below during the engagement, but 

appeared on deck, and encouraged the sailors, assuring 

them of success. She had an arm broken in this battle, 

and was accustomed to say afterwards that she had fought 

both for the house of Stuart and the house of Hanover, 

but had been worsted in the service of both. 

When peace was restored between Britain and Amer- 
ica, her husband was released from his long imprisonment, 
and returned as speedily as possible to Skye, where they 
continued to live comfortably and happily for eight or 
nine years. She died on the 5th of March, 1790, and was 
buried in the churchyard of Kilmuir, in the north end of 
Skye, her funeral being more numerously attended than 
any other that has ever taken place in the Western Isles. 



CHAPTER XVII. 
From Scotland to England — Western Route. 

Stratford-on-Avon, September 13, 1902. 

THE finest expanses of heather that we saw in Scot- 
land were on the great moors through which our 
train ran southward's from Inverness, a rolling sea of 
pinkish purple bloom, stretching for miles and miles on 
every hand. Farther down we enjoyed the picturesque- 
ness of the Pass of Killiecrankie, but it was the history 
here rather than the scenery which interested us, for it 
was here that Claverhouse, the stony-hearted persecutor 
of the Covenanters, fought and won his last battle, but lost 
his own life. Still farther south, at Dunkeld, we were 
reminded of the heroic and successful resistance made by 
the staunch men of Galloway to the hitherto victorious 
Highlanders, well described in Mr. Crockett's Lochinvar, 
which, as many of my young readers know, is a sort of 
sequel to The Men of the Moss Hags. 
In and around The Tay at Perth is a noble stream. It is 
Perth. said that when the Romans came in sight 

of it, they exclaimed, "Ecce Tiber ! Ecce campus Mar- 
tius !" The scornful resentment which Scotchmen feel at 
this comparison of their beautiful river to the more fa- 
mous Italian stream, which Hawthorne somewhere de- 
scribes as "a mud puddle in strenuous motion," is ex- 
pressed in the lines which Sir Walter Scott has placed 
at the head of the first chapter of his Fair Maid of Perth: 

" 'Behold the Tiber !' the vain Roman cried, 
Viewing the ample Tay from Baiglie's side; 
But where's the Scot that would the vaunt repay, 
And hail the puny Tiber for the Tay?" 



134 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

It has been whimsically said that Perth is the smallest 
city in the world, because it is situated between two 
inches. Inch was the old Scottish word denoting an 
island or meadow. We were most interested, of course, 
in the North Inch, where the judicial combat took place 
between the two clans, and in which Henry Wynd and 
Conachar were engaged. The name of one of these clans, 
the Clan Quhele, reminded me of the thrifty little town 
built up by the Highland Scotch element in eastern North 
Carolina. They called the town "Quhele." But the other 
native elements of the population, not appreciating Scotch 
tradition and what seemed to them an outlandish name, 
changed it in common use to "Shoe Heel," and this un- 
dignified designation of their town so coniplttely ousted 
the other that the people by act of legislature had the 
name changed to "Maxton," that is, Mac's Town, for 
nine-tenths of the people in that region are Macs, and 
mighty good people they are, too. We visited the Fair 
Maid's House, and in the evening read the Magician's 
romance about her. Through the great kindness of rela- 
tives and boyhood companions of friends of ours in Rich- 
mond, who had the good fortune to be born and brought 
up in Perth, we were given every opportunity to see the 
interesting old city from every point of view, and both 
those of us who climbed to the top of Kinnoul Hill, which 
an old traveller once called "the glory of Scotland," and 
those of us who drove with the kind friends above men- 
tioned to Scone Palace, whence the ancient crowning stone 
now in Westminster Abbey was taken, were fully agreed 
that the place richly deserved its affectionate name of 
"The Fair City." One member of our party made an 
excursion one day from Perth to Kirriemuir, the 
"Thrums" of Mr. Barrie's stories, while two others de- 
voted the day to an excursion in the other direction to the 



FROM SCOTLAND TO ENGLAND. 135 

beautifully situated town of Crieff, world renowned as a 
health resort. Here we were most pleasantly entertained 
by the kind friends in whose delightful home I was a 
guest at Glasgow in 1896. Any one of the drives about 
Crieff on a perfect day, such as we had, will give one a 
new impression of the loveliness of Perthshire, the district 
of Scotland to which Sir Walter awards the palm for 
beauty. 

On my former visit, I had made a detour from Perth, 
in this same direction, for the purpose of seeing Logieal- 
mond, the "Drumtochty" of Ian Maclaren, which is only 
a few miles from Crieff, and had visited the Free Church, 
in which the young pastor of the Bonnie Brier Bush 
stories preached "his mother's sermon," and "spoke a 
gude word for Jesus Christ" ; and the Established Church, 
where, under a big elm, the nippy tongue of Jamie Soutar 
was wont to wag on Sunday mornings ; and the farm of 
Burnbrae, and other places in the glen which has now be- 
come so famous. I am sorry to say that Dr. John Wat- 
son's later development, both theological and literary, has 
not been so satisfactory as was once expected. 

On our way down to Edinburgh we had a 
°scotiInd and glimpsc from the car windows of Loch 
theEnsiish Lcveu, and the island castle in which Mary 
Queen of Scots was confined to keep her 
out of mischief, and in connection therewith recalled what 
we could of The Monastery and The Abbot, the former 
one of the least successful, and the latter one of the most 
successful of Scott's romances. We had a glimpse also of 
Dunfermline, the birthplace of Andrew Carnegie, to say 
nothing of its ancient renown, crossed the Forth Bridge 
once more, made a brief stay in Edinburgh, and pushed 
on to Ayr, passing the battlefield of Ayrsmoss and other 
points of interest in connection with the Covenanters. 



136 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

We could give only two days to Ayr, but saw the birth- 
place of Burns, Auld Alloway Kirk, Bonnie Doon, and 
the various memorials of the poet ; then went to Dumfries 
principally to see the Burns monuments there, passing 
reluctantly through the Covenanter country without stop- 
ping. From Dumfries we crossed the border, passing the 
original Gretna Green, where for more than a hundred 
years the runaway couples from England were married, 
and went direct to Keswick, at the head of Derwentwater, 
for the purpose of seeing something of the English Lake 
District. Skiddaw is a noble and satisfying mountain. 
We were interested also in the memorials of Southey at 
Crossthwaite Church. But Southey is responsible for the 
severest disappointment that comes to travellers in the 
Lake District. By his artificial and jingling lines on 
"How the water comes down at Lodore," he has raised 
expectations which the poor little falls at the foot of 
Derwentwater cannot realize. The American who came 
there and sat down on a rock and watched the falls for 
a while, and then declared that there was at least a gill 
of water coming down, was hardly guilty of a greater 
exaggeration in one direction than Southey in the other. 
But there is no other disappointment about the scenery 
of the English Lakes. It is lovely. It is said that a 
famous classical scholar, preaching to a small congrega- 
tion of rustics in the Lake District, said to them, "In this 
beautiful country, my brethren, you have an apotheosis of 
nature and an apodeikneusis of theocratic omnipotence !" 
We trust that the sentiment which he tried to express was 
all right, notwithstanding the insufferably pedantic form 
of it. Of course we took the coach from Keswick to 
Windermere, stopping for the night at Ambleside, and 
visiting the grave of Wordsworth hard by the clear and 
placid stream, an ideal resting-place for the poet of nature. 



FROM SCOTLAND TO ENGLAND. 137 

Chester and Chester, with its quaint Rows, and red sand- 

Lichfieid. stonc Cathedral, and its high promenade on 
top of the walls encircling the old part of the town, and 
especially its Roman remains — for Chester is funda- 
mentally a Roman town, as its name indicates (it was the 
Castra of the Twentieth Legion) — interested us, as did 
also Eaton Hall, the magnificent seat of the Duke of 
Westminster, three miles distant ; but we had rain, rain, 
rain, and besides, we had lingered so long in the fasci- 
nating "land of the mountain and the flood" that we were 
anxious to push on to places of still more interest to us. 
So we did not tarry there long. We treated Coventry, 
Kenilworth, Leamington, and even Lichfield, in the same 
touch-and-go fashion. We could not bring ourselves to 
omit Lichfield altogether, partly because of its lovely 
cathedral, but chiefly because it was the town of Dr. 
Samuel Johnson, the greatest man of books that ever 
lived. Therefore, we stopped there long enough to go 
through the rich collection of Johnson relics in the house 
where he was brought up, to study the monument to him 
in the market-place in front, and to inspect the cathedral. 
Boswell's Life of Johnson is the best biography in the 
English language. The careful reading of it is a pretty 
thorough education in literature. I fear it is not read as 
much as it used to be. People are too much occupied with 
the ephemeral effusions of contemporary mediocrities to 
read the great books. 

Our visit to this town reminded me of a story that I 
had read years ago of a certain bishop of Lichfield who 
had a reputation for repartee and ready replies to difficult 
questions. In a crowded room one evening, when it was 
not known that the bishop was present, the conversation 
turned to this aptness of his, and a man said, "I should 



10 



138 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

like to meet that bishop of Lichfield ; I'd put a question 
to him that would puzzle him." 

"Very well," said a voice from another corner, "now 
is your time, for I am the bishop." 

The first speaker was somewhat taken aback, but re- 
covered himself sufficiently to say, "Well, my lord, can 
you tell me the way to heaven?" 

"Nothing easier," answered the bishop, "you have only 
to turn to the right and go straight ahead." 
The Shakespeare And uow wc are of¥ for the Shakespeare 
Country. couutry, not far away. Very different from 

the bold scenery of Scotland is that of this part of Eng- 
land. Here one sees — 

"The ground's most gentle dimplement 
(As if God's finger touched, but did not press, 
In making England) — such an up and down 
Of verdure ; nothing too much up and down, 
A ripple of land, such little hills the sky 
Can stoop to tenderly and the wheat fields climb." 

The most striking feature of an English landscape to 
an American eye is the extraordinary finish — lawns, 
fields, fences, houses, roads, are all such as can belong 
only to an old and prosperous country. An Oxford man, 
when asked how they managed to get such perfect sward 
in the college lawns, replied: "It is the simplest thing 
in the world; you have only to mow and roll regularly 
for about four hundred years." 

At Stratford-on-Avon we stayed at the Red Horse 
Inn, Washington Irving's hotel when here. We visited 
Anne Hathaway 's cottage, the school of the poet's boy- 
hood, the ugly and staring Shakespeare memorial, and 
the other points of interest. It is familiar ground to most 
readers, and I shall refer to only two things. 



FROM SCOTLAND TO ENGLAND. 139 
„^ , . In the church where Shakespeare is buried 

The American _ _ -"^^ 

Window at there is an American window, not yet fin- 
stratford, fshcd whcn I first saw it, and there was a 

box hard by to receive the donaltions of American visitors. 
The rich stained glass represents the infant Christ in his 
mother's arms, and on either side English and American 
worthies in attitudes of adoration. On one side are 
Amerigo Vespucci, Christopher Columbus and William 
Penn, representative pious Americans, and on the other 
Bishop Egwin of Worcester, "King Charles the Martyr 
and Archbishop Laud !" The fact that more than two 
thousand dollars have been contributed for this window 
is conclusive proof of the humiliating fact that a large 
number of the Americans who visit Stratford are ninnies. 
I venture the assertion 'that their admiration for Shakes- 
peare is humbug, that they have not sufficient intelligence 
to appreciate his real worth, and that they could stand 
about as good an examination on the immortal plays as 
that King George who, after vain attempts to read Shakes- 
peare, gave it up with the remark that it was very dull 
stufif. He was "clever just like a donkey," as one of our 
European guides said when we asked him about the intel- 
lectual grade of certain monks, and these citizens of a 
free country who give money for a monument to Charles L 
and Archbishop Laud are equally clever. I was speaking 
of this window to one of the most interesting men I met 
in Scotland, my host, the learned and distinguished Dr. 
W. G. Blackie, and he put the whole thing into "the husk 
o' a hazel" with the remark that "Charles the First was 
one of the most incorrigible liars that ever lived." He 
was, and he was moreover the inveterate foe of every 
princple represented by the American Government. And 
yet Americans are contributing to a memorial window of 
him and Laud ! 



I40 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Eneiishin ^s One wandcrs about the streets of the 

England. quaint English town he is beset from time 

to time by groups of children, who in a kind of humming 
or chanting chorus recite the leading facts in the life of 
Shakespeare, for which they expect, of course, to receive 
a small fee. The substance and sound of this curious 
monotone have been represented approximately as fol- 
lows : "William Shykespeare, the gryte poet, was born in 
Stratford-on-Avon in 1564 — the 'ouse in which he dwelt 
may still be seen — 'is father in the gryte poet's boyhood 
was 'igh bailiff of the plyce — one who shykes a spear 
is the meaning of 'is nyme," and so on. In like manner 
the London newsboys say, "Pipers, sir?" As a friend of 
mine puts it, they do not "label your trunks" here, but 
"libel your boxes," and they call the Tate Gallery "Tight." 
That reminds me of the queer pronunciation of many 
proper names in Great Britain. Of course you know that 
Thames is pronounced Temz, and Greenwich Grinij, and 
Beauchamp Beecham, and Gloucester Gloster, and 
Brougham Broom. But did you know that Kirkcud- 
bright was pronounced Kirk-coo-bree, that at Cambridge 
they call Caius College Keys College, and that at Oxford 
they call Magdalen College Maudlen College ? The Cock- 
burn Hotel at which we stopped in Edinburgh is called 
Coburn. So Colquhoun is Cohoon, Wemyss is Weems, 
Glamis is Glams, Charteris is Charters, Methuen is 
Methven, Cholmondeley is Chumley, Marjoribanks is 
Marchbanks, Ruthven is Riven, DeBelvoir is De Beever 
and Menzies is Mingis. Worse yet, Bethune is Beeten, 
Levison-Gower is Luson-Gore, Colclough is Coatley, St. 
John is Sinjun, St. Leger is Silleger, and Uttoxeter is 
Uxeter. But, then, we have in Virginia the name En- 
roughty pronounced Darby. High Holborn in London is 
T 'Obun. Some of their contractions are remarkable. 



FROM SCOTLAND TO ENGLAND. 141 

The name of Bunhill Fields, the great Nonconformist 
burying-ground, is short for Bone Hill. The famous 
charity school, where the boys wear blue coats, is called 
"The Blukkit School," instead of the Blue Coat School. 
Rotten Row, the fashionable track for horseback riders 
in Hyde Park, is an ugly contraction of the French words 
route de roi, the king's road, because there was a time 
when only the king was allowed to use it. I cannot leave 
this subject without telling you that the name of Dugald 
Dalgetty of Drumthwacket, who afforded you so much 
amusement when you were reading The Legend of 
Montrose, is called in Scotland Diggety instead of Dal- 
getty. 

Other things of interest in this connection are that 
shoes are not shoes in England, they are boots. If you 
ask for shoes they will give you slippers. There are no 
overshoes, only galoches. No shirtwaists, nothing but 
blouses. You can't get a spool of thread, but a reel of 
cotton. Locomotive engineers are called "drivers," and 
conductors are called "guards." In Scotland all the 
church notices are "intimations." 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

A Visit to Rugby and a Tramp to the White Horse 

Hill, 

London, September 20, 1902. 

ONE would think at first view that it would be as easy 
to write a good book for boys about school life as 
to write a good story about any other subject. But it 
does not seem to be so. At any rate, many gifted and 
Tom Brown's pfactised authors have attempted it, with 
School-days ouly moderate success. Archdeacon Farrar, 
at Rugby. ^^^^ ^£ ^j^^ most versatile writers of our 

time, has given us a pretty good story of scho-Dl life in 
his St. Winifred's, but the work is marred by its too 
constant appeal to morbid emotion. Mr. Rudyard Kip- 
ling, too, has tried his hand on a book for boys, and has 
only given us what Dr. Robertson Nicoll justly calls "that 
detestable thing," Stalky & Co. The less boys have to do 
with that kind of books the better. High hopes were 
raised by the announcement that the Rev. John Watson, 
D. D., of Liverpool, better known as 'Tan Maclaren," 
author of Beside the Bonny Brier Bush, and many other 
exceedingly popular volumes, was to publish a book on 
school-boy life. It was known that he had the requisite 
talent, sympathy and humor, that he was a scholarly and 
high-minded man, and that he had sons of his own. 
Surely these are just the qualifications that a man ought 
to have in order to write an ideal book for boys. But 
Dr. Watson's book, Young Barbarians, was a disappoint- 
ment. It has many true and bright and laughable things 
in it, and it glorifies manliness and pluck, but it often ridi- 



RUGBY AND WHITE HORSE HILL. 143 

cules the good boys of the school, the boys who give the 
teacher no trouble and perform their tasks faithfully, and 
it makes the most mischievous and lawless boy in school 
its hero. Besides, it is not one continuous story, but a 
group of sketches. 

In short, I know only one book of this class having 
the first order of merit, and that is Tom Brown's School 
Days at Rugby. In my judgment, that is the best book 
for boys that has yet been written, the most natural, the 
most interesting, the most wholesome. It has an abiding 
charm. I read it as a boy, and I have read it again and 
again since I was grown. It is one of the books whose 
scenes I have always wished to visit. The opportunity 
came a few days ago while I was travelling through Cen- 
tral England with several youngsters, ranging from eleven 
years to fifteen, to whom I had read Tom Brown, and 
who wished to visit Rugby. 

The Rugby The place is now an important railway 

of to-day. junctiou, with a wilderness of tracks, and 

trains flying in and out in every direction. What a 
change in the mode of travel since the days of the Pig 
and Whistle which brought Tom down to Rugby ! The 
school itself, however, is much the same — the venerable 
buildings and quadrangles ; the doctor's house, with its 
wealth of vines ; the wide sweep of green playground, 
where Tom had his memorable first experience at foot- 
ball, and "the island," as the mound on one side was 
called. On the bulletin board was an announcement about 
"hare and hounds," so that this splendid game, so finely 
described in the book, is evidently still a favorite. One 
marked innovation since Tom's time is the introduction 
of the military feature into the school. The boys are 
now regularly drilled, and in passing through the build- 
ings one sees the rows of rifles neatly ranged along the 



144 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

walls. It is one of many indications of England's effort 
to keep up a full stream of recruits for her army. 

In the library we are shown the long gilt hand from 
the old clock in the school tower, the very hand on which 
Tom and East scratched their names as a suitable con- 
clusion to a certain series of exploits ; and, looking closely, 
we see the name "Thomas Hughes." He was the original 
of Tom Brown, and to him we are indebted for this un- 
rivalled story of Hfe at school. Just in front of the library 
building stands a singularly fit and vital bronze statue of 
Judge Hughes, represented as wearing a sack coat, infor- 
mal, manly, keenly intelligent, kind and true — the very 
thing to appeal to boys. 

I spoke above of the generally unchanged appearance 
of the buildings. But the library just mentioned is an 
exception, being new ; and another exception is the very 
large and handsome new chapel of variegated brick, so 
that we no longer see it just as it was when Tom, on 
revisiting Rugby, knelt before Dr. Arnold's tomb, and 
lifted a subdued and thankful heart to God. But the 
remains of the great head-master still lie there, and on 
one side of the chapel is a good recumbent statue of 
Arnold, and just below it a similar one of his favorite 
pupil, Stanley, afterwards the celebrated dean of West- 
minster. 

We left Rugby regretfully, but we were not 

Our Expedition , i . i i . i -xi 

to Tom through With the scenes connected with 

Brown's Tom Browu, by any means, for, a few days 

Birthplace. , , . . . /-\ r i t 

later, while sojourning at Oxford, 1 pro- 
posed one evening to our young people that we should 
make an expedition to the White Horse Vale, where Tom 
was born, and where, moreover, we could see that most 
ancient, most striking, and most durable of Saxon monu- 
ments, the huge figure of a galloping horse, three hundred 



RUGBY AND WHITE HORSE HILL. 145 

and seventy feet long, cut in the hillside by removing the 
turf to the depth of a foot or two and exposing the white 
chalk beneath, made by King Alfred's soldiers to com- 
memorate his great victory over the Danes at this place — 
to say nothing of a great fortified Roman camp on top 
of the same hill. The suggestion was agreed to with 
alacrity, and next morning, after an early breakfast, we 
took a train from Oxford down the Thames Valley, but 
at Didcot turned westward, and soon came to Wantage, 
the birthplace of Alfred the Great, of whom there is a 
statue in the market-place, the native town also of Bishop 
Butler, the author of the immortal Analogy, and the resi- 
dence at present of the notorious leader of Tammany 
Hall, New York, Richard Croker, who has his racing 
stables here. 

The country through which we are passing is as flat 
as a Western prairie, but since leaving Didcot we have 
come in sight of a range of chalk hills covered with the 
greenest of grass, running parallel with the railway on 
our left, and distant some two or three miles. The high- 
est point in this range is the White Horse Hill — our 
destination. 

At Uffington Station we leave the train and begin our 
tramp, first of two miles to Uffington village, where, as 
we pass the parish school, we have the good fortune to 
see the children all out at play, as in the time when Harry 
Winburn taught Tom Brown that valuable trick in wres- 
tling, and when Tom and Jacob Doodlecalf were caught 
by the wheelwright while performing in the porch in a 
manner not conducive to the gravity and order of the 
school. 
„^ „. ^ The ground has been level thus far, but for 

The Highest ^ 

Horse we ever the next mile or so it rises gently, the great 
Mounted. white figure on the hill before us becoming 



146 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

more distinct as we come around in front of it 
somewhat, and then when we come to the foot of 
the hill itself we find a sharp climb before us, and are 
presently going almost straight up. Up, up we go. Let 
us pause for a rest. Up again. Another pause. Now 
look back. What a lovely view ! One more pull for the 
top, and here we are at last, standing on the broad tail 
of the White Horse, mopping our brows with our hand- 
kerchiefs, and panting with the exertion, while the wind 
blows a stiff gale from the west. But we yield the floor 
for a few moments to the man who first told us about 
this place: 

What a hill is the White Horse Hill ! There it stands 
right up above all the rest, nine hundred feet above the 
sea, the boldest, bravest shape for a chalk hill that you 
ever saw. Let us go up to the top of him, and see what 
is to be found there. Ay, you may well wonder and 
think it odd you never heard of this before. 
The Roman Ycs, it's a magnificent Roman camp, and no 
Camp. mistake, with gates and ditch and mounds, 

all as complete as it was twenty years after the strong 
old rogues had left it. Here, right up on the highest point, 
from which they say you can see eleven counties, they 
trenched round all the tableland, some twelve or fourteen 
acres, as was their custom, for they couldn't bear anybody 
to overlook them, and made their eyrie. The ground falls 
away rapidly on all sides. Was there ever such turf in 
the whole world? You sink up to your ankles at every 
step, and yet the spring of it is delicious. There is always 
a breeze in the "camp," as it is called; and here it lies, 
just as the Romans left it. , . . It is altogether a place 
that you won't forget, — a place to open a man's soul and 
make him prophesy, as he looks down on that great vale 
spread out as the garden of the Lord before him, and 



RUGBY AND WHITE HORSE HILL. 147 

wave on wave of the mysterious downs behind; and to 
the right and left the chalk hills - running away into the 
distance, along which he can trace for miles the old 
Roman road, "the Ridgeway" ("the Rudge," as the coun- 
try folk call it), keeping straight along the highest back 
of the hills ; — such a place as Balak brought Balaam to 
and told him to prophesy against the people in the valley 
beneath. And he could not, neither shall you, for they 
are a people of the Lord who abide there. 

.„ ., And now we leave the camp, and descend 

King Alfred s ^' 

Defeat of towards the west and are on the Ash-down. 

the Danes. -y^^ ^^^ treading on heroes. For this is the 
actual place where our Alfred won his great battle, the 
battle of Ash-down, which broke the Danish power, and 
made England a Christian land. The Danes held the 
camp and the slope where we are standing — the whole 
crown of the hill, in fact. "The heathen had beforehand 
seized the higher ground," as old Asser says, having 
wasted everything behind them from London, and being 
just ready to burst down on the fair Vale, Alfred's own 
birthplace and heritage. And up the heights came the 
Saxons, "and there the battle was joined with a mighty 
shout, and the pagans were defeated with great slaughter." 
After which crowning mercy the pious king, that there 
might never be wanting a sign and a memorial to the 
countryside, carved out on the northern side of the chalk 
hill, under the camp, where it is almost precipitous, the 
great Saxon white horse, which he who will may see from 
the railway, and which gives its name to the vale, over 
which it has looked these thousand years and more. 
_ „ Right down below the White Horse is a 

The Manger ° 

and the curious deep and broad gully, called "the 

Dragon's Hill, ^^angcr" [bccause it is right under the 

mouth of the White Horse], into one side of which the 



148 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

hills fall with a series of the most lovely sweeping curves, 
known as "the Giant's Stairs"; they are not a bit like 
stairs, but I never saw anything like them anywhere else, 
with their short, green turf, and tender bluebells, and 
gossamer and thistle-down gleaming in the sun, and the 
sheep paths running along their sides like ruled lines. 

The other side of the Manger is formed by the 
Dragon's Hill, a curious little round self-confident fellow, 
thrown forward from the range, utterly unlike everything 
round him. On this hill some deliverer of mankind — 
St. George, the country folk used to tell me — killed a 
dragon. Whether it were St. George I cannot say; but 
surely a dragon was killed there, for you may see the 
marks yet where his blood ran down, and more by token 
the place where it ran down is the easiest way up the 
hillside. So far Thomas Hughes. 

As a truthful chronicler, I must record that some of 
our party, tempted by the precipitous slope covered with 
luxuriant grass, slid down the hill from the White Horse 
into the Manger, sitting down on the turf and letting 
themselves go, with the result of wrecking a pair of 
trousers or so, and carrying away some portion of the 
fertile soil of Berks to Oxford. 

The Blowing Passing along the ridgeway to the west for 
stone. about a mile, we may come to Wayland 

Smith's forge, a cave familiar to readers of Kenilworth, 
but we content ourselves with a distant view, and, de- 
scending the hill, turn to the east, and, after a brisk walk 
of three or four miles, we halt under a fine old tree in 
front of a cottage door, to see another object described 
in Tom Brozvn's School Days at Rugby, the celebrated 
Blowing Stone, "a square lump of stone, some three feet 
and a half high, perforated with two or three queer holes, 
like petrified antediluvian rat holes." It is chained to the 



RUGBY AND WHITE HORSE HILL. 149 

tree and secured with a padlock. Instead of the innkeeper, 
for whom Mr. Hughes was so fearful lest he should burst 
or have apoplexy when he blew the stone, a very comely 
matron came out of the cottage and blew it for us — then 
we all blew it in turn. The sound is described exactly 
in the book : "3. grewsome sound, between a moan and 
a roar, spreads itself away over the valley, and up the 
hillside, and into the woods at the back of the house, a 
ghost-like, awful voice." This stone is said to have been 
used in old times to give warning and summons in time 
of war. 

In his other book, on The Scouring of the White Horse, 
that is, the scraping away of the accumulated sand and 
grass, which is the occasion every year for the gathering 
of the whole country-side for games and festivities. Judge 
Hughes gives the following ballad in the country dialect, 
which contains a reference to this use of the stone : 

"The owed White Horse wants zettin to rights. 

And the 'Squire hev promised good cheer, 
Zo we'll gee un a scrape to kip un in zhape, 
An a'U last for many a year. 

"A was made a lang, lang time ago, 
Wi a good dale o' labor and pains. 
By King Alfred the Great when he spwiled their consate 
And caddled ^ they wosbirds,' the Danes. 

"The Bleawin' Stwun in days gone by 

Wur King Alfred's bugle harn, 
And the tharnin' tree you med plainly zee 
As is called King Alfred's tharn." 

Tx. T^^ . But the sun is now sinking westward, and 

I tie c.nect '-' 

upon our wc havc Still a long walk before us to the 

Appetite. railroad, and in order to catch our train it 

' Caddled, worried. * Wosbird, bird of woe, of evil omen. 



I50 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

must be a rapid walk as well. We have been so much 
interested that we did not think of anything to eat until 
now, but the vigorous exercise has given us keen appetites, 
and we begin to inquire for food. None to be had. So 
we set out hungry on our forced march to the station, 
and by steady toil reach it a few minutes before the arrival 
of our train, having tramped thirteen long miles up hill 
and down dale since leaving the train there that morning. 
In the compartment which we entered were a couple of 
English ladies, who presently opened a small case of tea 
things, lighted a spirit lamp, and brewed their tea. Then 
they drank it. That was the best tea I ever — smelled. 
The delicious aroma of it tantalized and tormented our 
weary and hungry pedestrians for miles, and put an edge 
on our appetites that made obedience to the tenth com- 
mandment an utter impossibility. 

It may seem incredible, but itjs a fact that our friend, 
Mr. Bird, and two of the youngsters in the party, did 
four miles more on foot at Wantage later on in the same 
day. You may be sure there was hearty eating and sound 
sleeping when we all got back to our quarters at Oxford 
that night, well satisfied with our memorable visit to the 
White Horse and the Blowing Stone. 

Our sojourn at Oxford, with her wealth of mellow 
architecture and her inspiring historical and literary asso- 
ciations, — our visits to Windsor Castle, Eton College, and 
Stoke Pogis, where Gray wrote his immortal "Elegy," — 
and our excursions to Hampton Court, with its wonderful 
grape vine and its crowding memories of Wolsey, Crom- 
well, and William III., and to Kingston, Richmond Hill, 
Kew Gardens, Kensington and the Crystal Palace, — were 
all full of interest, but must be passed over here, as there 
are subjects of greater importance connected with London 
which will occupy all the remaining space that we can 
give to England. 



CHAPTER XIX. 
The Most Interesting Building in the World. 

London, October 2, 1902. 

SOME months ago, when the kind urgency of my 
friends made it plain to me that I should go abroad 
for a while, and when it was decided that certain young 
students of the Shorter Catechism in my family should 
„^ „. ^ . go with me, I promised them a visit to the 

The Birthplace . 

of the Shorter birthplace of that marvellous compendium 
Catechism. q£ biblical doctrine, which for two hundred 
and fifty years has been such a weariness to the flesh of 
Presbyterian children throughout the English-speaking 
world, especially on Sunday afternoons, and which is such 
a priceless possession of their adult years when once 
thoroughly acquired in youth ; but I told them that the 
condition on which alone I could take them with a clear 
conscience to the spot where that matchless little book 
was written, was that they should memorize it perfectly 
beforehand, and I had the satisfaction before leaving home 
of hearing them all recite it without a mistake ; and, in 
order to retain with ease what was thus acquired with toil, 
they have continued to recite it regularly from beginning 
to end every Sunday afternoon. This is, of course, no- 
thing more than hundreds of other children have done, 
and I do not mention it as anything remarkable, but only 
as suggesting one reason for the eager interest with which 
we were looking forward to our visit to a certain part of 
Westminster Abbey. And so, on the very first morning 
after our first arrival in London, as soon as we had fin- 



152 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

ished breakfast, we hurried down to the gray old minster, 
where, in the midst of the roaring city, so many of the 
restless makers of the world's history, literature and art 
are now quietly sleeping; for we intended, after seeing 
where the Westminster Assembly sat, to give a full morn- 
ing to the other historical memorials of the Abbey. 
The Coronation Imagine, then, our disappointment, on 

Postponed. reaching the place, to find the Abbey closed, 
and to learn from the policeman at the door that no one 
knew when it would be opened again, certainly not for 
several weeks. You see, the building had been elabo- 
rately decorated for the coronation of King Edward VII., 
for this is where all the Kings of England have been 
crowned, from the time of William the Conqueror down ; 
and while we were crossing the ocean King Edward be- 
came very ill and had to undergo a surgical operation, 
as we learned on landing at Southampton, and so the 
great ceremonies planned for June 26th had to be post- 
poned. But the costly draperies used in the decorations 
were still in position, and had to remain till it should be 
seen whether the King would be well enough in a few 
weeks to receive the crown ; and of course the public 
could not be admitted to the Abbey till these sumptuous 
fabrics had either served their original purpose or been 
removed. Happily the King did recover in a few weeks, 
to the great joy of his subjects, who, chastened and sub- 
dued by their sovereign's sickness at a time so critical, 
came to the coronation on the second date appointed, 
August 9th, in a more thankful, if less jubilant, temper. 
The Abbey Meantime, however, we had gone on to 

still Closed. Scotland, after three weeks in London, feel- 
ing sure that on our return there would be nothing to 
prevent our seeing the great Abbey to our hearts' content. 
But no; after two full months in Edinburgh and the 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 153 

Scottish Highlands and the west of England, we found 
the Abbey still closed. The work of removing the tem- 
porary structures and hangings used at the coronation 
was still going on, a fact which suggests forcibly the ex- 
tent of these preparations, and, perhaps, also the leisureli- 
ness of English workmen, who are probably not accus- 
tomed to doing things as rapidly as Americans. But we 
had no idea of being deprived altogether of a sight of the 
interior of the Abbey by their slowness. London is a 
place of endless interest to visitors ; and so, though we 
had already given three weeks to the principal sights of 
the city, we contentedly settled down for two weeks more 
there, till the work in the Abbey should be finished. At 
last it was all done, and on October ist the building was 
again opened. We were among the first on the ground, 
and gave two full days to as thorough an examination 
of the building and its unparalleled contents as was prac- 
ticable within that time. 

The Assembly Of this inspcctiou of the Abbey and its 
of Divines. mouumeuts in general we shall have some- 
thing to say after a while, but for the present let us 
turn our attention to those parts of the building which 
are associated with the work of the famous Assembly 
of ministers and other scholars who met here in 1643 ^Y 
ordinance of Parliament "to establish a new platform of 
worship and discipline to this nation for all time to come," 
and to whose pious and learned labors, extending through 
more than five years and a half, and occupying one thou- 
sand one hundred and sixty-three sessions, the world is 
indebted for the Larger and Shorter Catechisms and that 
great Confession of Faith "which, alone within these 
islands, was imposed by law on the whole kingdom," and 
which, by its fidelity to Scripture, its logical coherence, 
and the majesty and fervor of its style, still commands 
11 



154 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

the adherence of a multitude of the clearest and strongest 

minds in Christendom. 

The Two Places The two parts of the Abbey especially con- 

ofMeetine. nccted with the work of the Assembly are 
at the two opposite ends of the building: the Chapel of 
Henry VII. at the eastern end, and the Jerusalem Cham- 
ber at the western; the one the most beautiful chapel in 
the world, the other a plain but comfortable rectangular 
room. Immediately after the service with which the 
Assembly was opened, and in which both houses of Par- 
liament took part, and which was probably held in the 
choir of the Abbey, where the regular daily services now 
take place, the members appointed to the Assembly 
ascended the steps to the Chapel of Henry VII., and there 
the enrollment was made and the earlier sessions held. 
That was in summer, but when the weather became colder 
the Assembly gladly forsook the architectural magnifi- 
cence of this chapel, called by Leland "the miracle of the 
world," for the comfortable warmth of the homely room 
at the other end of the Abbey; for, as Robert Baillie, 
"the Boswell of the Assembly," says in his delightful ac- 
count of the proceedings, the Jerusalem Chamber "has a 
good fyre, which is some dainties at London." 
The Two Types I" this removal of the historic Assembly 

of Worship, from the cold splendor of the finest per- 
pendicular building in England to the plain comfort and 
common-sense arrangements of the little rectangular room 
where they were to reason together through so many 
months concerning the teachings of Scripture, one may 
see a parable of the Assembly's action in rejecting the 
ritualistic type of worship, with its predominating appeal 
to the aesthetic sensibilities through elaborate ceremonies, 
and its adoption of the New Testament type, with its 
predominating appeal to the mind through the oral teach- 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 155 

ing of truth. They were convinced that the spiritual life 
can be really nourished and developed only by the intelli- 
gent apprehension of the truth. Their own statement of 
the matter, drawn up in this very room, is that "the Spirit 
of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching 
of the Word, an effectual means of convincing and con- 
verting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and 
comfort, through faith unto salvation." And so those 
churches which have adopted the standards then framed 
by the Westminster divines have steadily magnified the 
didactic element of public worship, accentuating the teach- 
ing function of the minister to the extinction of the 
priestly. 

We pass from the nave of the Abbey 

Interior of the *^ _ , ^ 

Jerusalem through 3. dooT ou the south side into the 
Chamber. ancient cloisters, and, turning to the right, 
ring at the door of the janitor. A cherry-cheeked woman 
appears, and, when we state that we wish to see the Jeru- 
salem Chamber, she brings a key, turns with us again 
to the right, which brings us to the southwest corner of 
the Abbey, and ushers us through an ante-room into the 
celebrated meeting-place of the great Assembly, a rectan- 
gular room, running north and south, about forty feet in 
length by twenty in breadth, with a large double window 
in the western side opposite the spacious fireplace referred 
to by Baillie, and another fine window in the northern 
end, which, by the way, contains the finest stained glass 
in the whole Abbey. 

A long table, covered with a plain green cloth, occupies 
the centre of the room, with chairs around it ready for 
convocation; for the room is still regularly used for the 
meetings of ecclesiastical functionaries, occasionally also 
for special gatherings of wider interest, the most notable 
of which, since the Westminster Assembly, was the series 



156 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

of sessions held here by the company of scholars who 
had been appointed to revise the common English version 
of the Scriptures, and who, in 1885, brought that im- 
mensely difficult and important work to a successful con- 
clusion by their publication of the Revised Version of the 
Old Testament. 

This room has been the scene of many other memora- 
ble events, as we shall presently see, but none of them, 
nor all of them, can equal in interest and importance the 
work of that great Assembly which two hundred and fifty 
years ago formulated that lofty ideal of human life so 
familiar to us in the answer to the first question of the 
Shorter Catechism: What is the chief end of man? 
Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for- 
ever — a statement which has probably had a deeper and 
wider influence for good in the Anglo-Saxon world than 
any other twelve words ever written by uninspired men. 
. , ^ The Jerusalem Chamber, in which the 

Exterior of the •' 

Jerusalem Westminster Assembly of divines held its 
Chamber. \oxig sessious and did its immortal work, is 
a low building which runs along the southern half of the 
front of the Abbey, and is easily seen to the right of the 
main door in any picture of the great western facade. It 
strikes one at first as an architectural blunder, except as 
a foil to the lofty front of the main structure, but it has 
served many great practical uses. It was built about five 
hundred years ago, in the old days of monastery, as a 
guest chamber for the Abbot's house. I may pause here 
a moment to remind my younger readers of the fact that 
the word "minster," as in "Westminster," is equivalent 
to monastery, from the Latin monasterium, and the still 
more curious fact that the word has been preserved more 
nearly in its Latin form in the Monster Tavern and the 
Monster Omnibuses, well known in the immediate neigh- 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 157 

borhood of the Abbey, which derive their name from the 
same ancient monastery now known as Westminster. 
Origin of The name, Jerusalem Chamber, seems to 

its Name. havc been derived from the tapestries with 
which the walls were originally hung, and which por- 
trayed different scenes in the history of Jerusalem. Before 
the meeting of the Westminster Assembly, however, these 
had been replaced by another series of pictures represent- 
ing the planets, and it is to these that Baillie refers when 
he tells us that the room was "well hung." To the same 
keen observer, whom nothing escaped, we are indebted 
for the information that the light from the great window 
was softened by "curtains of pale thread with red roses." 
But the curtains and tapestries that Baillie saw have in 
turn given place to those which the visitor now sees on 
the walls, and which do not call for special notice here. 
The first tapestries, however, those which gave the room 
its name, are connected with one of the most memorable 
events that ever occurred in this historic apartment, the 
Death of death of Henry IV., in fulfillment, as the 

Henry IV. King thought, of the prophecy that he 
should die in Jerusalem. In his old age Henry projected 
a visit to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, by way of 
penance for his usurpation, and when the galleys were 
already in port to bear him on his journey, he came to 
pay his parting devotions at the shrine of Edward the 
Confessor in Westminster Abbey. There he was seized 
with a chill, and, as the old chronicler says, "became so 
sick that such as were about him feared that he would 
have died right there ; v/herefore they, for his comfort, 
bare him into the Abbot's place, and lodged him in a 
chamber, and there upon a pallet laid him before the fire, 
where he lay in great agony a certain time." When 
borne to the bed, which had meantime been prepared for 



158 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

him in another room, the scene occurred which is so 
graphically described by Shakespeare: 

"King Henry. — Doth any name particular belong 
Unto the lodging where I first did swoon? 

Warwick. — 'Tis call'd Jerusalem, my noble lord. 
King Henry. — Laud be to God ! — even there my life must end, 
It hath been prophesied to me many years 
I should not die but in Jerusalem; 
Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land : 
But bear me to that chamber; there I'll lie; 
In that Jerusalem shall Harry die." 

, , But Henry IV. was not the only man who 

Imprisonment of -' _ -^ 

Sir Thomas lookcd death in the face in this room. Many 
^'""*" years later, when Henry VIII. was just be- 

ginning that infamous career of divorcing and beheading 
wives, and burning Protestants as heretics, and hanging 
Romanists as traitors for saying that the Pope was supe- 
rior to the King in matters of religion — a career which 
has made his name one of the most detestable in history — 
Sir Thomas More, the noblest Englishman of his time, 
was arrested for his refusal to swear that Henry's mar- 
riage with Anne Boleyn was lawful, and on his way to 
the Tower of London was confined for four days in the 
Jerusalem Chamber. Shortly afterwards, under the act 
of Parliament which directed that every one who refused 
to give the King a title belonging to him was to be put 
to death as a traitor. Sir Thomas More was executed on 
Tower Hill because he could not honestly give Henry the 
title of Supreme Head of the Church of England. 

Other dead bodies, too, besides that of Henry IV. have 
lain in this room. The body of Dr. South, the witty and 
eloquent court preacher, lay in state here. It was South 
who, when reading from the seventeenth chapter of the 
Acts the accusation of the Thessalonian mob against Paul 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 159 

and Silas — "These that have turned the world upside 
down are come hither also" — remarked that it was well 
for the apostles to turn the world upside down, because 
the devil had turned it downside up. 

, , From the Jerusalem Chamber the body of 

Funeral of ■' •' 

Joseph the illustrious essayist, Joseph Addison, 

Addison. after lying in state for four days, was car- 
ried forth in that memorable funeral procession at dead 
of night which was led by torchlight round the shrine 
of St. Edward and the graves of the Plantagenets to the 
chapel of Henry VII., the body being finally laid to rest 
opposite the Poet's Corner in the South Transept. "Such 
a mark of national respect was due to the unsullied states- 
man, to the accomplished scholar, to the master of pure 
English eloquence, to the consummate painter of life and 
manners. It was due, above all, to the great satirist, who 
alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it ; who, 
without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform, 
and who reconciled wit and virtue, after a long and dis- 
astrous separation, during which wit had been led astray 
by profligacy, and vir'tue by fanaticism." So wrote Lord 
Macaulay of Addison, reminding us, at the same time, 
how Addison "was accustomed to walk by himself in 
Westminster Abbey, and meditate on the condition of 
those who lay in it" ; and now Macaulay himself lies there 
close to the grave of Addison. 

Sir Isaac ^^^t the most illustrious man whose body 

Newton. ^35 cvcr lain in state in the Jerusalem Cham- 
ber is Sir Isaac Newton, the great philosopher, whom his 
friends called "the whitest soul they had ever known," 
and of whom Pope wrote the celebrated couplet: 

"Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night ; 
God said. Let Newton be, and all was light." 



i6o A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Such are some of the great names associated with the 
Jerusalem Chamber — Henry IV., Thomas More, Robert 
South, Joseph Addison, Isaac Newton — and to some of 
them the whole world is indebted, as to Sir Thomas More 
for his calm refusal to purchase his life at the cost of his 
convictions, and to Joseph Addison for all that he was 
as an author, a man, and a Christian, and to Sir Isaac 
Newton for his lofty character and his unparalleled ser- 
vices to the cause of human knowledge ; but, after all, it 
may be doubted whether the world is more deeply in- 
debted to any of them than to that body of thoroughgoing 
scholars and profound thinkers who in this room two 
centuries and a half ago formulated the statement that 
"effectual calling is the work of God's Spirit, whereby, 
convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our 
minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, 
he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, 
freely ofifered to us in the gospel" — and one hundred and 
six other propositions concerning the most momentous 
interests of human existence, which for luminous con- 
densation of truth have never been surpassed in all the 
history of the human expression of the doctrines of Scrip- 
ture. 

An Architec- Westminster Abbey is not wanting in archi- 
turai Triumph, tcctural interest. Indeed, it is pronounced 
by Mr. Freeman the most glorious of English churches, 
and is said to be the one great church of England which 
retains its beautiful ancient coloring undestroyed by so- 
called "restoration." The exterior is singularly impres- 
sive, whether viewed from the east, where the exquisite 
lacework of Henry VII. 's Chapel, with its richly decorated 
buttresses, rivets the attention at the first glance ; or from 
the north, where we face the north transept, the front of 
which, with its niches, its rose-window, and its great 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. i6t 

triple entrance, is pronounced by Mr. Hare the richest 
part of the building externally ; or even from the west, 
where, in spite of the two comparatively late and feeble 
towers, we have a noble front, the loftiness of which is 
well brought out by "the low line of grey wall which 
indicates the Jerusalem Chamber." The interior is still 
more beautiful, and, as we have already seen, this beauty 
culminates in Henry VH.'s Chapel, the loveliness of which 
is absolutely unrivalled in the whole world. In his very 
sympathetic essay on Westminster Abbey in The Sketch 
Book, Washington Irving says of this wonderful chapel: 
"On entering, the eye is astonished by the pomp of archi- 
tecture and the elaborate beauty of sculptured detail. The 
very walls are wrought into universal ornament, incrusted 
with tracery, and scooped into niches, crowded with the 
statues of saints and martyrs. Stone seems, by the cun- 
ning labor of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight 
and density, suspended aloft, as if by magic, and the 
fretted roof achieved with the wonderful minuteness and 
airy security of a cobweb." 

Coronations ^^t the iutriusic bcauty of the building is 

and Burials. Quly a Small part of the explanation of the 
unique place which it holds in the interest of mankind. 
The two real reasons are suggested by Waller's lines : 

"That antique pile behold, 
Where royal heads receive the sacred gold : 
It gives them crowns, and does their ashes keep ; 
There made like gods, like mortals there they sleep. 
Making the circle of their reign complete. 
Those Sims of empire, where they rise they set." 

Coronation and burial ! Here the nominal kings are 
crowned. Here they and the real kings — those who by 
their genius and character really rule the race — are 
buried. 



i62 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

The stone ^^ the chapcl of Edward the Confessor 

ofScone. stands a scratched and battered wooden 
chair, six hundred years old, beneath the seat of which 
is inserted a thick, flat block of reddish sandstone. This 
is the celebrated Stone of Destiny, about the adventures 
and travels of which so many incredible stories have been 
told, from the time of its alleged use by the patriarch 
Jacob as a pillar at Bethel, till the time of its arrival at 
Scone, near Perth, in Scotland. It is certain that from 
the middle of the twelfth century all the Scottish kings 
were crowned on this stone, till it was captured and car- 
ried to London by Edward I., and that in the oak chair 
beneath which the stone was then enclosed all the kings 
of England since the time of Edward I. have been 
crowned, the last being Edward VII., on the 9th of last 
August. It has never been carried out of the church but 
once. That was when it was taken to Westminster Hall, 
across the street, that in it Oliver Cromwell might be 
installed Lord Protector. Thus it was that "the greatest 
prince that ever ruled England," as Lord Macaulay rightly 
calls him, the man who refused to wear the crown, but 
who wielded so much more of real power than any of 
those who did wear it that he placed England in the fore- 
front of European nations and made her mistress of the 
seas, was not inducted into his office in the Abbey, where 
all the other sovereigns have been crowned since Wil- 
liam I., but in Westminster Hall, which is also a place 
of extraordinary historical interest. The chair which 
holds the Stone of Scone, and the mate to it, made later 
and used for the queen consort, are, of course, covered 
with rich upholstering at the coronations, and much of 
the defacement of them is the result of driving nails into 
the wood for this purpose. 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 163 

Whither the "^"^ *^^ main attraction of Westminster 
Paths of Abbey is neither its architectural glory nor 

Glory Lead. j^^ connection with the crowning of the 
nation's sovereigns, but the fact that it is the chief sepul- 
chre of Britain's great men. Not only is the building 
"paved with princes and a royal race," their memory a 
mingling of grandeur and of shame, but the uncrowned 
glories of the nation, the true and pure and gifted, lie 
there as well under our feet, or are commemorated in 
stone before our eyes. Some English sovereigns are 
buried elsewhere, as Charles I. at Windsor, and Victoria 
at Frogmore ; some preeminent men of action also, as 
Nelson and Wellington at St. Paul's Cathedral; some 
authors, too, of the first order of genius, as Shakespeare 
at Stratford, Milton at St. Giles, and Goldsmith in the 
Temple yard at London ; and so on, but nowhere else on 
earth have the ashes of so many great men been brought 
together as in Westminster Abbey. Moreover, to many 
who are buried elsewhere monuments have been erected in 
the Abbey; for instance, to the three poets who have just 
been mentioned. That of Shakespeare is a marble figure 
holding a scroll on which are inscribed these lines from 
the Tempest, peculiarly appropriate in the building where 
so much greatness is buried : 

"The Cloud capt Towers, 
The Gorgeous Palaces, 
The Solemn Temples, 
The Great Globe itself, 
Yea all which it Inherit, 
Shall Dissolve, 
And like the baseless Fabrick of a Vision 
Leave not a rack behind." 

In St. Margaret's Church, hard by the Abbey on the 
north side, lies the decapitated body of another great 



i64 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Englishman of the EHzabethan era, Sir Walter Raleigh, 
whose History of the World contains a passage which 
expresses, as no other within my knowledge has done, 
the feeling that comes to a thoughtful man as he walks 
through this solemn burial place of genius and power: 
"O eloquent, just, and mighty Death ! whom none could 
advise, thou hast persuaded ; what none hath dared, thou 
hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou 
only hast cast out of the world and despised ; thou hast 
drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the 
pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all 
over with these two words, Hie jaeet." 

A sober autumn day, with the leaves changing and the 
atmosphere touched with melancholy suggestive of the 
passing of worldly glory, prepared us to feel the full 
force of Raleigh's sentiment, and, as we stepped through 
the doorway into the subdued light of the minster, and 
saw the multitude of white marble statues and tombs 
stretching through dim aisles and clustering in gloomy 
chapels, we were "hushed into noiseless reverence," and 
understood what Edmund Burke meant when he said, 
"The moment I entered Westminster Abbey, I felt a kind 
of awe pervade my mind which I cannot describe ; the 
very silence seemed sacred." 
_,. „ , Remembering that "too many tombs will 

The Monuments o J 

of the Nave producc the samc satiety as too many pic- 
and Transepts. ^^^^^^,, ^^^ determined not to fill our minds 

with "a hopeless jumble in which kings and statesmen, 
warriors, ecclesiastics and poets are tossing about to- 
gether," we began at the Poet's Corner, as every one 
should do on his first visit, and, merely glancing at the 
monuments of subordinate interest, gave our time to those 
of the men with whose lives and works we had some 
acquaintance from our former reading, thus spending a 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 165 

whole morning in the two transepts and the nave. What 
a Hst of glorious names is aftorded by even this meagre 
selection! Chaucer, Spencer, Browning, Tennyson, 
Shakespeare, Milton, Gray, Burns, Scott, Goldsmith, Cole- 
ridge, Southey (the last eight named being represented by 
monuments, but buried elsewhere) ; Thackeray, Addison, 
Macaulay, Garrick, Samuel Johnson (with his degree of 
LL. D. chiselled after his name in the unscholarly form 
of "L. L. D." — a thing which would have mortified him, 
and which one would not expect to find in Westminster 
Abbey), Charles Dickens; Dr. Busby (for fifty-five years 
head-master of Westminster School, celebrated for his 
extremely free use of the rod and for having persistently 
kept his hat on when Charles II. visited his school, saying 
that it would never do for the boys to think any one 
superior to himself) ; — all these and many more in or 
near the south transept ; then in the nave. Major Andre 
(hanged by Washington as a spy), Lord Lawrence ("who 
feared man so little because he feared God so much"), 
David Livingstone, Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton, 
Matthew Arnold, Charles Kingsley, Wordsworth, Wil- 
liam Pitt, Charles James Fox, "Rare Ben Jonson" ; then, 
in the north transept. Lord Mansfield, Warren Hastings, 
and others, among them the monument of the "Loyall 
Duke of Newcastle" (1676) and his literary wife, a most 
voluminous writer, who was in the habit of calling up 
her servants at all hours of the night to take down her 
thoughts, much to the disgust of her husband. When 
complimented on her learning, he said, "Sir, a very wise 
woman is a very foolish thing." 

A great deal of bad taste has been displayed 

Pagan Sculp- . r i • --r^i 

tures in a ^ the mouumcnts of this transept, i here 

Christian jg ^ colossal tomb by Nollekens, the worst 

Church. , . , A , , -1 

but one m the Abbey, commemorating three 



i66 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

sea captains. It represents Neptune reclining on the back 
of a sea-horse, and directing the attention of Britannia 
to the medalhons of the dead, which hang from a rostral 
column surmounted by a figure of Victory. "Is that 
Christianity?" asked a visitor, pointing to Neptune and 
the trident. "Yes," wittily answered Dean Milman, "it 
is Tridentine Christianity" — a remark which has an ex- 
ceedingly keen edge, though it may not be appreciated 
except by those who have some knownledge of the relation 
sustained by the Council of Trent to the beliefs and prac- 
tices of the Romish Church. The sculptors were for a 
time "weighed down by the pagan mania for Neptunes, 
Britannias, and Victorys." Goldwin Smith says, "Some 
of the monuments might with advantage be removed from 
a Christian Church to a heathen Pantheon, while some 
might be better for being macadamized." 
The Nightingale The most Striking monument in the Abbey, 
Monuments, though Walpolc calls it "morc theatrical 
than sepulchral," is that of Lady Elizabeth Nightingale. 
In the lower part of the sculpture a skeleton figure. Death, 
has broken through the iron doors of the grave, and, 
grasping the ledge above him with one bony hand, is in 
the act of hurling his dart with the other at the lady, who 
with her husband occupies the upper part of the sculpture, 
and who is represented as falling back into the arms of 
her horror-stricken husband, while he makes frantic but 
futile efforts to shield her from the stroke. Wesley said 
Mrs. Nightingale's tomb was the finest in the Abbey, as 
showing "common sense among heaps of unmeaning 
stone and marble" ; but Washington Irving, while grant- 
ing that the whole group is executed with terrible truth 
and spirit, says it appears to him horrible rather than 
sublime, and asks, "Why should we thus seek to clothe 
death with unnecessary terrors, and to spread horrors 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 167 

round the itomb of those we love ? The grave should be 
surrounded by everything that might inspire tenderness 
and veneration for the dead ; or that might win the living 
to virtue. It is the place, not of disgust and dismay, but 
ot sorrow and meditation." 



CHAPTER XX. 
The Royal Chapels in Westminster Abbey. 

London, October 2, 1902. 

WE had reserved our last day in London for a visit 
to the eastern part of the great Abbey, where 
nearly all the kings and queens of England are buried. 
There is a charge of sixpence for admission to this part 
A Hard-hearted of the buildiug. When we had paid our 
Verger. fggs, a black robcd, bullet-headed, hard- 
voiced verger led us rapidly, along with a big crowd 
of other sightseers, from one chapel to another, point- 
ing out one or two objects of special interest in each, 
and speaking a few words of explanation. Thus we were 
"railroaded" through the Royal Chapels in the most tan- 
talizing manner. When we were all turned out of the 
iron gate at the end of this rapid round, with our heads 
full of a jumble of kings and queens, and other notables, 
our little party hngered to parley with our burly con- 
ductor, in the hope of getting more time in this fascinating 
part of the Abbey ; but, though a shilling is a wonder- 
worker in England, and though we offered to pay another 
fee each for the privilege of remaining a while longer, 
our guide was for some reason obdurate. It should be 
added, in justice to him, that this was only the second 
day that the Abbey had been opened to visitors, after 
being closed throughout the greater part of the summer 
on account of the coronation, and consequently there was 
a much larger number of visitors for the vergers to handle 
than usual. 



THE ROYAL CHAPELS. 169 

A Courteous We wcrc not yet beaten, however. After a 
Sub-Dean, brief "council of war," two of us walked out 
through the cloisters, rang at the door of the sub-Dean's 
residence, and, learning that he was not in, left a note 
for him, explaining our disappointment at having waited 
so long for the Abbey to open, only to find that we could 
get but a hasty glance at some of its most interesting 
parts, and asking him to give us permission to visit those 
parts at our leisure. On his return home, the sub-Dean, 
Canon Duckworth, very courteously wrote the desired 
authorization that we should visit the chapels "without a 
guide," and this permission was of use to some members 
of the party that afternoon. 

Meantime it occurred to us that all vergers might not 
be equally ungracious, so, pending the Canon's answer 
to our note, we approached that one of the vergers who 
seemed to have the most benevolent face, informed him 
that we had just been through the chapels, but that our 
guide had given us very little time, and had not shown 
us the wax effigies at all, which we were very anxious 
to see, and asked him if he could not afford us a better 
opportunity. Unlike him of the stony heart into whose 
hands we had fallen at first, this one promptly and kindly 
granted our request, though doubtless expecting a fee, 
which, by the way, he deserved and received, and not only 
came with us himself to show us the wax effigies, but then 
gave us liberty to roam among the chapels at our pleasure. 
It was now dinner-'time, but we gladly did without dinner 
in order to improve the opportunity thus secured, and 
set about a leisurely and thorough examination of the con- 
tents of the chapels and adjoining rooms in the eastern 
half of the building. 
The Wax The wax work figures in a chamber over 

Effieies. Qne of the chapels are very interesting, and 



170 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

should not be missed by visitors to Westminster, and yet 
I went through the Abbey some years ago without even 
knowing that they were there. We had a good look at 
them this time. They are effigies of notable personages, 
dressed exactly as they were in life. These effigies were 
carried at the public funerals of those whom they repre- 
sent. The earlier custom was to carry the embalmed 
bodies of the kings and queens, with faces uncovered, at 
their funerals, but from the time of Henry V. these life- 
like representations were carried instead. Here is Queen 
Elizabeth, ugly and overdressed, as usual, with the diadem 
on her head, the huge ruff round her neck, the long 
stomacher covered with jewels, the velvet robe embroid- 
ered with gold and supported on panniers, and the pointed 
high-heeled shoes with rosettes — "gotten up," perhaps, 
pretty much as she was when, just a year before her death, 
she had allowed the Scottish ambassador, as if by accident, 
to see her "dancing high and disposedly," that he might 
disappoint the hopes of his master. King James, by his 
report of her health and spirits; she was then an old 
woman. There are few subjects more perilous for a man 
to write about than a woman's dress, and I may as well 
tell my readers that in the foregoing description of Eliza- 
beth's finery I have closely followed good authorities. 

Another of the effigies shows us the swarthy and sen- 
sual face of Charles H. He is dressed in red velvet, with 
lace collar and ruffles. Here, too, is the strong face and 
slight figure of William HI., represented as very much 
shorter than Mary, his wife, who stands nearly six feet 
in height beside him. The fat figure of Queen Anne, and 
the very small one of Lord Nelson, with the empty sleeve 
of course, are among the most interesting. There are 
eleven in all still existing. A good many have disap- 
peared. 



THE ROYAL CHAPELS. 171 

Mutilated The shrine of Edward the Confessor is 

Monuments, raised upon a kind of platform mound, said 
to have been made of several shiploads of earth brought 
from the Holy Land, and is surrounded by the tombs 
of Edward L, the good Queen Eleanor, Richard H., 
Henry V., and others. Above the grand tomb of Henry V. 
are hung his shield, saddle and helmet. Upon it lies the 
headless effigy of the great king, which was cut from 
English oak and plated with silver-gilt. The head, which 
was of solid silver, with teeth of gold, was stolen from 
the Abbey centuries ago. Other tombs have suflfered in 
the same way. The coffin of Edward the Confessor has 
been robbed of its funeral ornaments. The sceptre has 
been stolen from the hand of Queen Elizabeth. One of 
the beautifully modelled fingers of the recumbent marble 
statue of Mary, Queen of Scots, has been broken oflF, 
carried away as a souvenir, perhaps, by some conscience- 
less vandal. 

In the two aisles on the opposite side of Henry VH.'s 
Chapel lie the remains of these two rival queens, Elizabeth 
and Mary, the one beheaded by the other, — a striking 
instance of the equality of the grave, and reminding us 
of Macaulay's description of the Abbey as "the great tem- 
ple of silence and reconciliation, where the enmities of 
twenty generations lie buried." 

I have only touched in the briefest manner a few of 
the many interesting monuments which throng the royal 
chapels. But there is one thing that I must write to you 
about before leaving the subject of Westminster Abbey 
finally, and that is the vacant space in the Central Eastern 
Chapel, where the body of the greatest man that ever 
ruled England once lay, and the story of why his body is 
not there now. 

We have seen that Lord Macaulay speaks of West- 



172 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

minster Abbey as "the great temple of silence and recon- 
ciliation, where the enmities of twenty generations lie 
buried." In the same strain, Sir Walter Scott writes : 

"Here, where the end of earthly things 
Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings ; 
Where stiff the hand and still the tongue 
Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung ; 
Here, where the fretted aisles prolong 
The distant notes of holy song. 
As if some angel spoke again, 
'All peace on earth, good will to men' ; 
If ever from an English heart, 
Oh! here let prejudice depart." 

These are fine sentiments, and certainly the policy of the 
authorities of the Abbey has been broad enough in some 
respects, far too broad indeed, as many think, in the mat- 
ter of admitting the bodies of men of skeptical views and 
evil lives to lie here alongside of the great and good in 
God's house. 

But in some other respects the policy has 

Monuments -t^i x- j- 

Denied to been a narrow one. ihe erection oi a 
Notable monument here to Louis Napoleon, the late 

Persons. __ 

Prince Imperial of France, who fell in Zulu- 
land while fighting in the cause of England, was pre- 
vented by what has been called ''the illiberal clamor of an 
ignorant faction." By the way, within the precincts of 
the Roman Catholic Oratory of Brompton, in West Lon- 
don, stands a statue of Cardinal Newman, the most dis- 
tinguished of modern apostates, who forsook the English 
Church for the Romish ; it was intended for Oxford, but 
was refused by the University, and not allowed a place 
in the streets of London. These two are not very good 
examples of the kind of narrowness to which I refer, — 
one can hardly blame the English churchmen for the 



THE ROYAL CHAPELS. 173 

treatment accorded to Newman's statue, — they are sim- 
ply instances which naturally come to mind in connection 
with the general subject. I will give an example presently 
of the complete triumph of prejudice in the exclusion 
from the Abbey of the greatest man of action that Eng- 
land ever produced. 

The Objection Meantime, as leading up to that, let us note 
to Milton. the remark of Dr. Gregory to Dr. Johnson 
when, in 1737, the monument of Milton was placed in 
the Abbey : "I have seen erected in the church a bust of 
that man whose name I once knew considered a pollution 
of its walls." He was referring to the action of Dein 
Sprat in cutting away a part of the fulsome epitaph on 
the tomb of John Philips which compared him to Milton, 
of whom he was a feeble imitator. "The line, 'Uni Mil- 
tono secundus, primoque paene par' was effaced under 
Dean Sprat, not because of its almost profane arrogance, 
but because the royalist dean would not allow even the 
name of the regicide Milton to appear within the Abbey — 
it was 'too detestable to be read on the wall of a building 
dedicated to devotion.' The line was restored under Dean 
Atterbury," and, as already noted, a bust of the great 
Puritan genius was installed in the Abbey a few decades 
later, so that the triumph of prejudice in this case was 
short-lived. 

The story reminds one of the action of 

Meigs and General Meigs in removing the name of 

President President Davis from the record-stone of 

the Cabin John Bridge near Washington. 

This magnificent aqueduct bridge, one of the largest and 

most beautiful single stone arches in the world, was 

erected by Jefferson Davis while Secretary of War for 

the United States, and of course his name, with those of 

the then President and other high officials of the govern- 



174 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

ment, was placed on the completed structure. When the 
Civil War came on, and Mr. Davis was elected President 
of the Confederate States, General Meigs had the misfor- 
tune to lose a son in battle in Virginia. One can feel pro- 
found sympathy with him in such a bereavement, but does 
it not seem a small and childish thing that he should 
then have had Mr. Davis' name chiselled off the bridge 
in revenge? And has not his action, like Dean Sprat's, 
defeated itself? The blank made in the inscription ex- 
cited curiosity and gave rise to questions, which brought 
out the whole story, and thus reminded many people who 
might otherwise have forgotten it, what eminent services 
Jefferson Davis had rendered to the united country before 
the unhappy division which made him the President of 
that portion of it with which his greater fame is now 
associated. 

The Vindication To but f cw mcu in her long history is Eng- 
of Cromwell. ]and SO deeply indebted as to Oliver Crom- 
well. Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, written by a 
bitterly hostile and prejudiced contemporary, effectually 
blackened Cromwell's character for some two hundred 
years, the misrepresentation being continued by other 
royalist writers, such as Sir Walter Scott in Woodstock. 
Carlyle's publication of Cromwell's own letters proved 
that he had been grossly slandered, and put it beyond 
question that the Protector was a sincere and godly man 
and a true patriot, as well as the greatest man of action 
that had ever lived in England. This is the view taken 
of Cromwell by the more recent biographies of him, 
which have been coming from the press in significantly 
rapid succession, such as Hood's, Gardiner's, John Mor- 
ley's and President Roosevelt's. So that in several senses 
Cromwell is coming to his own again, though his work 
seemed at one time to have failed utterly, and to have 



THE ROYAL CHAPELS. 175 

been swept clean away by the restoration of Charles H. 
to the throne. 

Treatment of It is of the indignities visited upon Crom- 
his Dead Body well's remains at the time of this Restora- 
tion that I wish to tell you. The great men of the Com- 
monwealth and several members of Cromwell's family 
were buried in the extreme eastern end of the Abbey. 
After the Restoration they were disinterred from this hon- 
orable place of sepulture, and the only member of the 
Protector's family who was allowed to remain in the 
Abbey was his second daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, "as 
being both a royalist and a member of the Church of 
England." 

The bodies of Cromwell, his son-in-law. General Ire- 
ton, and Bradshaw, the judge who had condemned 
Charles L, were dragged through London on sledges and 
hanged at Tyburn, and their heads were set up on the 
high roof-gable of Westminster Hall, the very building 
in which Cromwell had been made Lord Protector of the 
Commonwealth. It is safer to kick a dead lion than a 
living one. Fancy these valiant royalists treating Crom- 
well that way in his lifetime ! 

jj.^^ ^ J Cromwell's head, having been embalmed be- 

cromweirs forc his burial, "remained exposed to the 
^^^^' atmosphere for twenty-five years, and then 

one stormy night it was blown down, and picked up by 
the sentry, who, hiding it under his cloak, took it home 
and secreted it in the chimney corner; and, as inquiries 
were constantly being made about it by the government, 
it was only on his death-bed that he revealed where he 
had hidden it. His family sold the head to one of the 
Cambridgeshire Russells, and in the same box in which 
it still is, it descended to a certain Samuel Russell," who, 
being in need, sold it to James Cox, the keeper of a 



176 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

famous museum. Cox in turn sold it, about the time of 
the French Revolution, for $1,150, to three men, who 
made a business of exhibiting it at half a crown per head 
in Bond Street, London. At the death of the last of these 
three men, it came into the possession of his three nieces. 
These young ladies, being nervous at keeping it in the 
house, asked Mr. Horace Wilkinson, their physician, to 
take charge of it for them, and finally sold it to him ; and 
in his house at Sevenoaks, Kent, the head of Oliver Crom- 
well remains to this day. 

It is a ghastly story, though I have been careful to 
leave out the most gruesome details. 

To-day, immediately in front of Westminster Hall, 
where his head was first exposed in dishonor, stands a 
bronze statue of the Great Protector, with a Bible in 
one hand and a sword in the other, — erected within the 
last five years, — and doubtless the day will come when a 
monument of "the greatest prince that ever ruled Eng- 
land" will be given its rightful place in Westminster 
Abbey. 



CHAPTER XXI. 
The Cathedrals vs. The Gospel. 

London, October 2, 1902. 

"D EFORE saying what I had in mind when I remarked, 
•^-^ in a former letter, that in some respects the Enghsh 
cathedrals had proved to be hindrances to vital religion, 
I wish to cite what Goldwin Smith says of the significance 
„ . . , ^. and beauty of these glorious monuments of 

Original Sig- •' ° 

nificanceofthe mediseval piety: "Nothing so wonderful or 
Cathedrals. bcautiful has evcr been built by man as 
these fanes of mediseval religion which still, surviving the 
faith and the civilization which reared them, rise above 
the din and smoke of modern life into purity and stillness. 
In religious impressiveness they far excel all the works 
of heathen art, and all the classical temples of the Renais- 
sance. Even in point of architectural skill they stand 
unrivalled, though they are the creations of an age before 
mechanical science. Their groined roofs appear still to 
baffle imitation. But we do not fully comprehend the 
marvel, unless we imagine the cathedrals rising, as they 
did, out of towns which were then little better than col- 
lections of hovels, with but small accumulation of wealth, 
and without what we now deem the appliances of civilized 
life. Never did man's spiritual aspirations soar so hig'h 
above the realities of his worldly lot as when he built 
the cathedrals." The last proposition is not true. What 
Professor Smith wished to say was that never did an 
outward, material expression of man's religion so far sur- 
pass all his other outward conditions. But even when 
thus stated, it must be remembered that these great struc- 



178 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

tures were not erected by those who inhabited the ''hovels" 
referred to, but by kings, or nobles, or prelates who lived 
in palaces and rolled in wealth. Still, the cathedrals were 
built as an expression of religion. Religion in the Middle 
Ages expressed itself chiefly in the erection of these costly 
and splendid buildings, as it now expresses itself chiefly 
in missionary activity. 

Their iEsthetic Passing by, for the present, Westminster 
Influence. Abbey, Canterbury and Winchester, which 
excel all others in historical interest, and St. Paul's, which, 
though the largest of all, is modern, we may agree fully 
with Smith's estimate of the relative merits of the different 
cathedrals and the effect produced by them: that "Salis- 
bury is the most perfect monument of mediaeval Chris- 
tianity in England" ; that in height and grandeur the 
palm is borne off by York; in beauty and poetry, by 
Lincoln; that Norman Durham, "half church of God, 
half castle 'gainst the Scot," is profoundly imposing from 
its massiveness, which seems enduring as the foundations 
of the earth, as well as from its commanding situation; 
that Ely also is a glorious pile, on its unique mound 
among the fens; and that Wells and Salisbury are "the 
two best specimens of the cathedral close, that haven of 
religious calm amidst this bustling world, in which a man 
tired of business and contentious life might delight, espe- 
cially if he has a taste for books, to find tranquillity, with 
quiet companionship, in his old age. Take your stand on 
the close of Salisbury or Wells on a summer afternoon 
when the congregation is filing leisurely out from the 
service and the sounds are still heard from the cathedral, 
and you will experience a sensation not to be experienced 
in the New World." 

Having shown by these citation that Goldwin Smith 
is not indifferent to the aesthetic influence of the cathe- 



THE CATHEDRALS vs. THE GOSPEL. 179 

drals, I wish now to quote from him a final paragraph 
which states very well the practical point to which I re- 
ferred in the outset : 

Their Roman- "The Cathedral and the parish church be- 
izine Tendency. Jong to the prcscnt as well as to the past. 
Indeed, they have been recently exerting a peculiar influ- 
ence over the present, for there can be no doubt that the 
spell of their beauty and their adaptation, as places of 
[Roman] Catholic devotion, to the Ritualistic rather than 
to the Protestant form of worship have had a great effect 
in producing the Neo-Catholic reaction of the last half 
century. Creations of the religious genius of the Middle 
Ages, they have been potent missionaries of the mediaeval 
faith." 

I wish to call special attention to this ominous feature 
of the influence of English cathedrals upon the forms, 
and thus eventually upon the spirit, of Christian worship. 
I am not unsusceptible, I think, to the glorious beauty 
of these stately buildings, or the spell of their exquisite 
music, or the fascination of their spectacular forms of 
worship. I shall never forget the solemn impression 
made upon my mind the first time I ever entered a great 
cathedral, when, at Chester, I stepped from the broad 
glare of outer sunshine into the cool, dim light of the 
minster, and heard the choir of white-robed, sweet-voiced 
boys responding with a prolonged, musical "A-men," 
accompanied by the great organ, as the priest intoned the 
English service. But I am clear, nevertheless, that Gold- 
win Smith is right in saying that by their adaptation to 
the ritualistic rather than the Protestant form of worship 
the cathedrals have been potent missionaries of the medi- 
aeval faith. 

The Roman Catholic ideal of Christian worship is 
very different from that of Protestants. Its functionary 



i8o A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

is a priest, who offers sacrifice, and performs the cere- 
monies of an elaborate ritual. Its appeal is chiefly to 
the senses and the aesthetic sensibilities. Protestants, on 
the other hand, hold that the minister is not a priest, but 
a teacher; his function is not the performance of cere- 
monies, but the inculcation of truth. The truly Pro- 
testant churches appeal chiefly to the mind rather than 
to the senses, they rely upon ideas rather than ceremonies, 
because they know that only by the intelligent apprehen- 
sion of truth can the spiritual life be really nourished 
and developed. In a Romish church the central thing is 
the altar. In a Protestant church the central thing is the 
pulpit. In short, Romish churches are built for ceremo- 
nies, and Protestant churches for preaching. The cathe- 
drals were erected as Romish churches. There was little 
or no thought of their being used for preaching. They 
were erected as expressions in stone of religious aspira- 
tion ; they are "frozen music" ; they are places for pro- 
cessions, and incense, and altars, and pictures, and vest- 
ments, and chants, but they are not adapted to preaching. 
They are too large, for one thing. No man could make 
himself heard throughout some of them. Nor was it 
intended that he should. 
^^ . ^^ , It is an extraordinary paradox that the 

Their Charm for . . 

the Greatest of fincst exprcssiou in any language of the idea 
the Puritans. ^^ich lay in the minds of those who built 
the cathedrals was given by a Puritan writer : 

"But let my due feet never fail 
To walk the studious cloisters pale; 
And love the high embowe'd roof 
With antique pillars massy proof: 
And storied windows, richly dight, 
Casting a dim, religious light. 
^ There let the pealing organ blow 

To the fuU-voic'd choir below, 



THE CATHEDRALS vs. THE GOSPEL. i8i 

In service high and anthems clear, 

As may, with sweetness through mine ear, 

Dissolve me into ecstasies, 

And bring all heaven before mine eyes." 

Thus Milton in // Penseroso, the interpretation of which 
I must leave to the students of that exquisite poem. Only 
let it not be forgotten that in his Eikonoclastes, Milton 
ridicules the organs and the singing men in the King's 
chapel, as well as the "English mass-book" of the "old 
Ephesian goddess called the Church of England." I am 
sorry to say, Milton is at times vituperative in his prose 
writings. 

A Half-reformed Let US bc morc rcspcctful in our references 
Church. "to the Church of England. It contains 

many good people and has done much good work. Still, 
it is an indisputable fact that it never has been a thor- 
oughly reformed church. Its origin as a separate church 
was different from that of the Reformed churches. Not 
through the protracted struggles of people and ministers 
did it win out clear from Romanism, with generally dif- 
fused and clear convictions of truth, as was the case with 
the really Reformed churches, but by the act of Henry 
VIII. detaching a certain portion of the Catholic Church 
from the papacy, for interesting domestic reasons, and 
making himself the head of the church. That was the 
origin of the Church of England as entirely distinct from 
the Church of Rome. Henry did not wish to become a 
Protestant at all, nor did he wish the people to change 
their religion, and, as a matter of fact, he had people 
burned alive for being Protestants. Of course, Protestant- 
ism did make progress afterwards under Edward VI. 
and Elizabeth, but there never was a sufficiently decisive 
break with Romish doctrine and Romish forms of wor- 
ship. And, the architecture of the cathedrals and parish 



1 82 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

churches being what it is, there has been a constant ten- 
dency to relapse to the Romish model outright. 

If we seem to attribute too much influence to mere 
architecture, let it be remembered that the structure and 
arrangements of the college buildings at Oxford, which 
did not admit of family life, but were designed for the 
mediaeval clerical students who were celibates, have had 
a tendency to revive the monk, and that, as a matter of 
fact, these Oxford colleges produced Newman and the 
other leaders of the Anglo-Catholic reaction in our day, 
to say nothing of Laud and his reaction two centuries ago. 
Relics of How easily the cathedrals may aid Roman 

Romanism. CathoHcism, and how strong is the linger- 
ing influence of what Macaulay calls "that august and 
fascinating superstition," may be seen not only in the 
general character of the services, but also in certain de- 
tails. Each cathedral has what is still called a Lady 
Chapel, that is, a chapel dedicated to Our Lady, the Virgin 
Mary. In the Lady Chapel of Winchester Cathedral is 
a series of highly prized wall paintings, of whose edify- 
ing character the reader may judge when he learns that 
one of them represents "the Virgin commanding the burial 
of a clerk of irreligious life in consecrated ground, be- 
cause he had been her votary" ; while another depicts a 
miracle by an image of the Virgin, which is bending its 
finger, so as to prevent a young man from taking off a 
ring, given him by his lady love, which he had placed on 
the image that it might not be lost or injured while he 
played at ball. "By this the young man was won to 
monastic life." Does this mean that he jilted the girl, 
or that she discarded him for losing her ring? 

Again, the inscription on the tomb of the builder of 
that cathedral, William of Wykeham, the same who built 
the round tower at Windsor Castle, records his work as 



THE CATHEDRALS vs. THE GOSPEL. 183 

bishop, politician, and founder of colleges, and concludes 
with this injunction: 

"You who behold this tomb cease not to pray- 
That, for such great merits, he may enjoy everlasting life." 

Finally, the most striking effigy on any tomb in Win- 
chester Cathedral is that of a great dignitary of the 
Romish Church, Cardinal Beaufort, represented here by 
a very fine recumbent figure in scarlet cloak and hat. He 
was enormously wealthy, was four times Lord Chancellor 
of England, was present at the burning of Joan of Arc 
at Rouen, and is said to have burst into tears and to have 
left the horrible scene ; but he persecuted the Lollards 
and gave a half million pounds to put down the Hussites 
in Bohemia, in which cruside he was general and legate. 
Yet here he lies, one of the most honored figures, in what 
is generally regarded as a Protestant church. 

These points are sufficient to indicate what I mean 
by saying that the cathedrals have in some respects had 
an unfavorable influence upon the doctrine and worship 
of the Church of England. 

If at the Reformation every cathedral in 

Presbyterians _, -i-> • • i i i 11 

also have Felt Crcat Britain had been pounded to pieces 
the Effect \^y ^he iconoclasts, it would have been an 

ofthem> . , , , . , . . , 

immeasurable calamity to art, but it might 
have been a real gain for religion. At any rate, it is 
ritualism rather than religion that is now promoted by 
the cathedrals. Nor is the English Church the only one 
that has inherited these splendid but baleful monuments 
of mediaeval Romanism. The Presbyterian Church has 
come into the possession of a few. The people of Scot- 
land at the time of the Reformation, remembering their 
oppression and impoverishment by the great church estab- 
lishments, and disregarding the more moderate counsels 



i84 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

of their leaders, smashed most of these buildings which 
fell to them, witness Melrose Abbey and many others — 
John Knox speaks of "the rascal multitude" that de- 
stroyed the buildings at Perth — but one or two they 
spared, for example, the Cathedral at Glasgow. It is 
maintained by some that the same tendency to ritualism 
manifests itself in these Presbyterian cathedrals as in 
others, though, of course, not to the same extent. Cer- 
tainly our simple and scriptural forms of worship, with 
the prominence which they give to the preaching of the 
Word, suit a warm, home-like church, where everything 
can be heard, much better than they do a cold and vast 
cathedral of stone which is too large for any congregation 
that ever assembles in it, and where the voice of the 
preacher is lost among the lofty arches. 

While the Presbyterians have in some cases not freed 
themselves completely from the Romish associations, and 
in the great buildings which were erected for Romish 
worship show something of the same tendency to undue 
ritualism, still I think it will be generally conceded that 
they severed the connection with Rome more effectually, 
on the whole, than any other church. 

Nor did their worship lose in real religious 

Simplicity impressivcness. Even Sir Walter Scott 

more (who, though a Presbyterian elder, had a 

strong leaning to the ritualistic churches), 

in the twentieth chapter of Rob Roy, puts into the mouth 

of his hero this description of the Presbyterian service in 

the crypt of Glasgow Cathedral: 

"I had heard the service of high mass in France, cele- 
brated with all the eclat which the choicest music, the 
richest dresses, the most imposing ceremonies, could con- 
fer on it; yet it fell short in effect of the simplicity of 
the Presbyterian worship. The devotion, in which every 



THE CATHEDRALS vs. THE GOSPEL. 1^5 

one took a share, seemed so superior to that which was 
recited by musicians as a lesson which they had learned 
by rote, that it gave the Scottish worship all the advan- 
tage of reality over acting." 

The more I see of the high church "service" the more 
incomprehensible it seems to me that any thoughtful man 
can take any other view than the one thus expressed by 
Scott. The service he describes was indeed conducted in 
a cathedral, but it was in the crypt, the part best adapted 
to intelligent Protestant worship, on account of its smaller 
dimensions and better acoustics. 



13 



CHAPTER XXII. 

Some Things for High Churchmen to Think About. 

London, October 3, 1902. 

T T does not follow, from what I said in my former letter 
-^ about the different forms of service in use among 
Episcopalians and Presbyterians, respectively, that the 
latter necessarily disapprove of the use of written prayers. 
So far is this from being the case that Calvin and Knox 
themselves wrote liturgies, though neither they nor their 
successors believed in the rigid prescription of fixed forms, 
but insisted upon ample freedom for the use of such 
original prayers as occasion demanded. The Book of 
Common Prayer itself, which is the product of every 
Christian age and Christian people, including Reformers, 
Presbyterians, Puritans and Lutherans, as well as Roman- 
ists and Anglicans, and which is used constantly by the 
Episcopal churches throughout the English-speaking 
world, owes no little to the influence of men of our faith 
and polity, and especially to that of the illustrious Genevan 
reformer, John Calvin. The General Thanksgiving, called 
"the chiefest treasure of the Prayer-Book," is said to 
have been composed by the Rev. Dr. Edward Reynolds, 
a distinguished Presbyterian member of the Westminster 
Assembly of Divines, and afterwards Bishop of Norwich. 
These prayers, as well as other parts of the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer, are constantly used, in whole or in part, by 
many Presbyterian ministers when leading the public 
devotions of their people, and the more such models of 
prayer are studied by Presbyterian ministers in general 



THOUGHTS FOR HIGH CHURCHMEN. 187 

the sooner will they cease to deserve the reproach that 
their manner of conducting this important part of public 
worship is sometimes rambling, slovenly and unedifying. 
No minister of our time of any denomination was more 
acceptable and helpful in the conduct of this part of the 
service than the late Rev. Dr. Moses D. Hoge, of Rich- 
mond. His prayers were characterized in a preeminent 
degree by good taste and propriety of expression, as well 
as by unction. He was a diligent student of the best litur- 
gies, such as those of Calvin, Knox and Cranmer. His 
biographer, speaking of "the elaborate and laborious 
preparation that he made for this service, as evinced by 
his papers," says : "Dr. Hoge's peculiar power in prayer 
was not merely the result of what is called the 'gift of 
prayer.' Not only his celebrated prayers on great public 
occasions were carefully written out, but from his early 
ministry he wrote prayers for every variety of occasion 
and service, and formulated petitions on every variety of 
topic." 

When we visited Canterbury Cathedral, the 
Presbyterians Other day, wc wcre reminded of another 
in Canterbury striking proof of the liberty of Presbyterian 

Cathedral. . , • ^, , • r 

usage m this matter. The place is, of course, 
one that brings to mind innumerable events of interest, 
ranging all the way from the tragedy of Thomas a 
Becket's death to the comedy of the struggle that took 
place in St, Catherine's Chapel, Westminster, in 11 76, 
between the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, a 
scuffle which led to the question of their precedence being 
decided by a papal edict, giving to one the title of Primate 
of all England, to the other that of Primate of England. 
One cannot help thinking, in connection with it, of the 
official titles of the two great Presbyterian bodies in our 
country, the technical title of the Northern Church being 



i88 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, 
and the technical title of the Southern Church being the 
Presbyterian Church in the United States. Fuller's 
Church History gives a racy account of the scene referred 
to : "A synod was called at Westminster, the Pope's legate 
being present thereat ; on whose right hand sat Richard, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, as in his proper place. When 
in springs Roger of York, and finding Canterbury so 
seated, fairly sits him down on Canterbury's lap (a baby 
too big to be danced thereon) ; yea, Canterbury's servants 
dandled this lap-child with a witness, who plucked him 
thence, and buffeted him to purpose." But far more inter- 
esting to us than the story of this undignified behavior 
on the part of these two dignitaries, and even more inter- 
esting than the thrilling story of Becket's murder, was 
the chapel in the crypt, where for three hundred and fifty 
years the Huguenots, who were welcomed by Queen 
Elizabeth and given the use of this part of the cathedral, 
have continued to use the ancient Presbyterian forms of 
worship which they brought with them when driven from 
France by Roman Catholic persecution. And it is a very 
interesting fact that the liturgy (in French) which they 
use is almost the same as the Book of Common Prayer, 
but immensely significant that the congregation continues 
to observe the Lord's Supper seated, after the Presby- 
terian form. The communion plates and cups, which we 
had the pleasure of taking up in our hands, were brought 
by the refugees to England three hundred and fifty years 
ago, but are still in use. 

From what has now been said, it is clear that 

TheConcomi- 

tantsandthe it is not altogether the use of the Prayer- 
intoning. Book which givcs to the American Pro- 

testant worshipping in an Anglican church that curious 
feeling of strangeness and formalism. It is rather the 



THOUGHTS FOR HIGH CHURCHMEN. 189 

Romish-looking- arrangements about the "altar," the 
crosses and candles and cloths, the vestments and proces- 
sions, the turning of the people towards the east when 
they pray, the "vain repetitions" of certain parts of the 
liturgy, such as the Lord's Prayer, which sometimes occurs 
four or five times in one service, and the "intoning" of the 
service, that is, the literally monotonous recitation of the 
prayers, without any rising or falling inflection, every 
word being uttered in precisely the same tone, without the 
slightest variation. I do not mean that all these features 
always occur in every service. Sometimes one or more of 
them will be omitted, such as turning to the east in prayer, 
or intoning. For instance, Canon Hensley Henson, whom 
we heard a short time ago at St. Margaret's, Westminster, 
where the late Canon Farrar preached so long and so' bril- 
liantly, and who, though quite radical in some of his views, 
is the most thoughtful preacher among the ministers of the 
Anglican Church in London at the present time, did not 
intone the prayers which he offered, though his assistant 
did. I do not know whether Canon Henson's usage is 
from necessity or choice — whether it is because he cannot 
intone or because he does not care to do so, preferring to 
address the Almighty in the same natural and expressive 
tones which he uses in communications with his fellow- 
men. 
_ „ , Canon Henson does not look the least like 

Canon Hensley 

Henson at the typical Englishman. His appearance is 

St. Margaret's, antipodal to that of the beefy, bluff, full- 
blooded John Bull. He is slender, clean-s'haven, boyish, 
white, his face "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 
thought." His body may be delicate, but there is no lack 
of vigor about his mind. The strength and charm of his 
preaching, due chiefly to the freshness of the thought 
and the purity and clearness of the language — for he has 



I90 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

no marked advantages of presence or voice or manner — 
draw great crowds to St. Margaret's. We had to wait 
at the door for some time to let the pewholders have a 
dhance, but when the word was given the crowd at the 
door poured m and quickly overflowed all the vacant 
seating space. Shortly after he began his sermon, which 
was read throughout, three ladies rose to leave the church, 
and I was not a little astonished to hear him stop and 
say, with what I thought was a touch of irritation, "1 
will wait till those ladies get out." No doubt it is vexa- 
tious to have people leave the church during the sermon, 
but no minister has a right to pillory anybody in that 
fashion, unless it is somebody who is known to be in the 
habit of interrupting the service in that way. The min- 
ister has no right to assume that people are doing a de- 
liberately discourteous or culpably thoughtless thing. The 
probability is that one of the ladies in the group referred 
to was sick or faint and had to withdraw. This kind of 
rudeness may be naturally expected from some of the men 
who in our country have done so much to degrade the 
fine name of "Evangelist," but surely one does not expect 
it from a gentleman like Canon Henson. 

„ While bound to criticise Canon Henson for 

Canon Henson 

on Anglican this breach of good manners, I hasten to 
Narrowness. gxprcss my cordial admiration of his cour- 
tesy, courage, and Christliness in general, and especially 
of the power of his statement of the claims of Christian 
love against the Anglican custom of refusing to commune 
with Nonconformists. The most remarkable sermon 
preached by any clergyman of the Established Church 
during our sojourn in England was a sermon preached 
by him before the University of Cambridge on the text, 
"There shall be one fold and one Shepherd," in which 
he advocated the admission of Nonconformists to the 
sacrament. Hear him : 



THOUGHTS FOR HIGH CHURCHMEN. 191 

"The primary need of the hour is more reHgious hon- 
esty. In the classic phrase of Dr. Johnson, Churchmen 
beyond all others need 'to clear their minds of cant.' 'Let 
love be without hypocrisy' is the kindred protest of St. 
Paul. Bear with me while I bring these considerations 
to a very simple, indeed an obvious application. On all 
hands there is talk of Christian unity. Not a Conference 
or a Congress of Churchmen meets without effusive wel- 
come from Nonconformists. A few weeks ago I sat in 
the Congress Hall at Brighton and listened to a series 
of speeches by prominent Nonconformists, all expressing 
the warmest sentiments of Christian fraternity. I re- 
flected that by the existing law and current practice of 
our church all those excellent orators and their fellow- 
believers were spiritual outcasts ; that, if they presented 
themselves for the Sacrament of Unity, they would be 
decisively rejected; that, in no consecrated building, 
might their voices be heard from the pulpit, though all 
men — as in the case of Dr. Dale, of Birmingham — 
owned their conspicuous power and goodness. The con- 
tradiction came home to my conscience as an intolerable 
outrage, and I determined to say here to-day in this 
famous pulpit, to which your kindness has bidden me, 
what I had long been thinking, that the time has come 
for Churchmen to remove barriers for which they can no 
longer plead political utility, and which have behind them 
no sanctions in the best conscience and worthiest reason 
of our time. I remembered that in my study, at work 
in preparation of the sermons which expressed my obli- 
gation as a Christian teacher, I drew no invidious dis- 
tinctions. Baxter and Jeremy Taylor, Dale and Gore, 
Ramsay and Lightfoot, Dollinger and Hort, George Adam 
Smith and Driver, Ritschl and Moberley, Fairbairn and 
Westcott, Bruce and Sanday, Liddon and Lacordaire, 



192 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

these and many others of all Christian churches united 
without difficulty in the fellowship of sacred science; it 
was not otherwise in my devotions. Roman Catholic, 
Lutheran, Anglican, Nonconformist were reconciled 
easily enough in the privacy of prayer and meditation. 
The two persons whom I venerated as the best Christians 
I knew, and to whom spiritually I owed most, were not 
Anglicans. Only in the sanctuary itself was the hideous 
discovery vouchsafed that they were outcasts from my 
fellowship. I might feed my mind with their wisdom, and 
kindle my devotion with their piety, and stir my con- 
science with their example, but I might not break bread 
with them at the table of our common Lord, nor bear 
their presence as teachers in the churches dedicated to 
his worship. It seemed to me that the love so lavishly 
expressed in that Congress Hall must, at least on our 
side, be a strangely hollow thing. It is true that the 
presiding bishop reminded the Nonconformists that there 
were doctrinal differences which could not be forgotten 
or minimized, but this obstacle was effectively demolished 
by the debates of the Congress — debates which revealed 
the widest possible doctrinal divergence between men 
who, none the less, communicated at the same altars and 
owned allegiance to the same church." 
ixrv .n Such a discourse from such a man in such 

WTiat Canon 

Henson could a placc naturally created a sensation in 
irginia. g^glaud. It would not have done so, as to 
its main point, in Virginia. Why ? Well, the fundamental 
reason is that the average Virginia Episcopalian repre- 
sents a much higher type of Christianity than the average 
English churchman, broader, sweeter, truer. Indeed, if 
there are in any church anywhere people of lovelier char- 
acter, truer charity, and more genuine devotion to our 



THOUGHTS FOR HIGH CHURCHMEN. 193 

Lord than the evangelical Episcopalians of Virginia, many 
of whom it has been my good fortune to know long and 
intimately, I have never heard of them. I only wish the 
type was more common in some other parts of the coun- 
try. Now, the things so trenchantly stated by Canon 
Henson in the foregoing excerpt are mere matters of 
course to the mind of your evangelical Low Churchman 
in Virginia. To him it is no uncommon thing to break 
bread with Christians of other denominations at the table 
of our common Lord or to hear the gospel preached by 
ministers of other churches from the pulpits of his own. 
I have heard it said that this fraternal attitude is depre- 
cated by some of the younger clergy in Virginia of late, 
and that through their opposition this open recognition 
of other Christian people and their ministers is less com- 
mon than it used to be. I should be sorry to believe it, 
and I know some facts which seem to disprove it. Four 
or five years ago I myself was invited to deliver the 
Reinicke Lecture to the students of the Episcopal Semi- 
nary at Alexandria, Va., and did so with a feeling of as 
cordial welcome as I had ever received anywhere in my 
whole life. I have been repeatedly invited to preach in 
Episcopal pulpits. When the General Assembly of our 
church meets in Lexington, Va., next May, you may rely 
upon it Presbyterian ministers will be invited by the rector 
of the Episcopal church there to supply his pulpit on 
Sunday, just as they are by the pastors of the other 
churches. More than that, I have a friend in the Pres- 
byterian ministry, now a pastor in Baltimore, who not 
long ago, by invitation of the vestry of an Episcopal 
church in a Virginia town, not only occupied the pulpit 
and preached, but also wore the surplice and administered 
the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 



194 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

It may be true that there is a reaction eroins: 

Are Virginia . , ^. . . o o 

Episcopalians ou evcn in Virginia against this spirit of 
Becoming Christian fellowship, and that things of this 

Less Liberal ? ° 

kind are less frequent than formerly; but, 
if so, I am satisfied that it is a reaction with which the 
Virginia laymen have nothing to do, and which they will 
oppose as soon as they berome aware of it,^ and I am 
sure, too, that clergymen will not be lacking who will 
make a strong stand against it. 

One or two other facts which may well be 

^Auen^dance pondcred, by High Churchmen have been 

in the Anglican brought to light by the ccnsus of church 

London*^ *" attendance in London, recently taken by the 

Daily Nezus of that city. The census shows 

that, while more than one-half of the five millions of 

people in London are Christian worshippers, there has 

been a decrease in church attendance of over one hun- 

^ December, 1903. — It was an immense satisfaction to me to 
learn, on my return to America, that in the matter of the pro- 
posed change in the name of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
the laity had saved the day and decisively defeated the clerical 
delegates who represented the pro-Catholic sentiment, and wished 
to call their denomination the American Catholic Church, and 
thus make it appear that there was closer sympathy between 
Episcopacy and Romanism than between Episcopacy and Pro- 
testantism. In one diocese in particular, in which I have always 
felt a peculiar interest, although the Bishop in his opening address 
made a strong plea for the change, and although he carried the 
clergy with him, he and they were overwhelmingly defeated by 
the lay delegates. Would it not be a singular situation if the 
clergy, the official leaders of the people in spiritual things, should 
come to stand as a class for all that is reactionary or bigoted 
or trivial, while the people themselves represented the real spirit 
of Christ? There may be such a tendency on the part of the 
clergy in other dioceses, but I can hardly believe that it is true 
of those in Virginia, 



THOUGHTS FOR HIGH CHURCHMEN. 195 

dred thousand since 1886, that this decrease has been 
almost entirely in the congregations of the Church of 
England, and that the attendance in the Established and 
Nonconformist churches is now about equal. 

The census shows further that in wealthy districts 
the Established Church, as we might expect, has the ma- 
jority. As was also expected. Nonconformists have a 
majority in middle-class districts. But, contrary to all 
expectations. Nonconformists are a majority in the work- 
ing-class districts and among the very poor. It was often 
said that only the ritualists were getting bold of the poor, 
and many supposed the Salvalion Army was doing great 
things amongst the lowest people. It is one of the sur- 
prises of the census that ritualism fails to attract the non- 
church-going classes. 

In the proportion of the sexes present, in almost all 
cases the Episcopal churches showed two women to one 
man; in nonconformist churches the proportion of men 
was greater, being two men to three women. Does not 
this preponderance of men in the nonconformist congre- 
gations indicate clearly that if the Church of England 
is to retain her hold upon men she must lay less stress 
upon the appeal to the aesthetic sensibilities and more 
upon the appeal to the mind; that she must make less 
of the ornamental features of public worship and more 
of the didactic; less of millinery, music and marching, 
and more of the preaching of the gospel? As the British 
Weekly puts it : 

"The great means of attracting the people is Christian 
preaching. Whenever a preacher appears, no matter what 
his denomination is, he has a great audience. Nothing 
makes up for a failure in preaching. The churches of all 
denominations, if they are wise, will give themselves with 
increased zeal and devotion to the training of the Christian 



196 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

minislry. I have no doubt that it is for lack of a trained 
order of preachers that the Salvation Army has failed 
in London. Nor will any magnificence of ritual or any. 
musical attractions, or any lectures on secular subjects, 
permanently attract worshippers. It can be done only by 
Christian preaching." 

In this connection the following clipping 

EsUmateof*" froui The Evaitgelist is not without interest, 

Presbyterian as sliowiug that both the discase and the 

itiff. remedy are at least partially recognized by 

some observers within the English Church : 

"A recent writer in The Gitardiaii, one of the leading 
Church of England papers, laments the decay of preach- 
ing within his own communion, and is forced to contrast 
the conditions obtaining in Presbyterian churches with 
those which prevail in Episcopalian ones, to the obvious 
disadvantage of the latter. While it is true that the 
Church of England has some great preachers, as it always 
has had, the ordinary village vicar is scarcely mediocre. 
Such is not the case among the Presbyterians — in Scot- 
land, with which the writer is familiar — or in America, 
Canada, Australia, or in missionary lands, where the same 
standards and ideals are in efifect. Here are the charac- 
teristics of Presbyterian preaching as described by a 
Church of England critic : 

" 'Their ministry lays itself out for the cultivation of 
prophetical power, and not without success. In general, 
they are students of Hebrew, which the English clergy 
are not. The consequence is that for a good Old Testa- 
ment sermon you must go north of the Tweed. In Eng- 
land we confine ourselves almost exclusively to the New 
Testament, not merely because of its transcendent im- 
portance, but because it is ground with which we are more 
familiar. But the loss to our people is great. 



THOUGHTS FOR HIGH CHURCHMEN. 197 

" 'Then, again, the Scottish ministers are students of 
German theology. More or less they are at home in the 
writings of the great German thinkers, both orthodox and 
liberal. We, as a rule, are not. . . . 

" 'One more point. In travelling through Palestine 
some years ago, with a view to the study of biblical 
geography, I was greatly struck with the preponderance 
of Scottish ministers who were there on the same purpose 
intent. I think it no exaggeration to say that they were 
in numbers to the English clergy as five to one. Evidently 
they regard it as a necessary part of that same biblical 
equipment they are so careful about, that they should with 
their own eyes realize the scenes of the sacred narrative. 
A pilgrimage to the Holy Land is now so easy, and is, 
moreover, to any thoughtful Christian teacher so fruitful 
in results, that it is a marvel it should not be made an 
ordinary addition to a university or theological college 
course. To any one who will go with a reverent mind 
and open eyes, and with his Bible as his Baedeker, it is 
an unparalleled experience for life. If it is objected to 
on the score of expense, I ask, How do the Presbyterian 
ministers, and a large proportion of Nonconformist min- 
isters also, manage to accomplish it ?' " 

The Guardian itself, in an editorial comment on the 
decreasing attendance of men in the Anglican churches, 
says frankly that a large number of men are "repelled 
by the extremely low standard of preaching which pre- 
vails, and the comparative success of Nonconformity may 
be due in part to the attention which is devoted to the 
preparation of the sermon." "Another source of offence 
is the over-elaboration of musical services, and the prac- 
tical exclusion of the congregation from any real share 
in prayer and praise. It is a fatal policy which drives 
the devout but unmusical away from our churches to 



198 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

chapels in which they can find greater simplicity and 
greater heartiness. One of the surprises of the census 
has been that the Nonconformists have been found to be 
strong not only in middle-class districts, but in the regions 
where poverty abounds. The poor, we believe, are at- 
tracted by greater simplicity, and it must be acknow- 
ledged that the services of our Prayer-Book are difficult 
for the uninstructed to follow and to appreciate. There 
is a stage at which a greater elasticity of worship is 
needed, and for this we make no adequate provision." 

According to the latest statistics, the relative strength 
of the Established Church and the free evangelical 
churches is as follows : 

Sittings. Communicants. 

Established (estimated), 7,127,834 2,050,718 

Free, 8,171,666 2,010,530 

5. S. Teachers. S. S. Scholars. 

Established, 206,203 2,919,413 

Free, 391,690 3.389,848 



CHAPTER XXIII. 
Paris and Memories of the Huguenots, 

The Hague, October 21, 1902. 

THE English Channel is one of the oldest ferries in 
the world. For two thousand years and more, men 
have been crossing it in all sorts of craft, but they have 
never yet found a way to do it comfortably when the 
water is rough, as it generally is. Our experience made 
us doubt whether the modern steamers that ply between 
New Haven and Dieppe are a whit more comfortable than 
the galleys of Julius Caesar. Our boat was mercilessly 
buffeted by the winds. She rolled and plunged in every 
direction. It seemed to us that her propeller was out of 
the water half the time. If seasickness really is good 
for people, this Channel should be called a health resort. 
All the members of our party were violently sick except 
myself. We felt sure we had discovered one of the 
reasons why the shore to which we looked so wistfully 
is called "the pleasant land of France." Any land would 
seem pleasant after that dreadful Channel. At last we 
reached it, pale and wretched. As we entered the mouth 
of the river at Dieppe the huge crucifix overhanging the 
harbor reminded us that we were now in a Roman Catho- 
lic country. And a "pleasant land" it is in many respects. 
Our railroad journey to Paris through the fair and fertile 
Valley of the Seine made that quite evident. 

We secured quiet and comfortable quarters 
Beauty of close to the lovcly Madeleine Church and 
the French only two blocks from the Place de la Con- 
corde, the finest square in Europe, with the 



200 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Seine on one side, the Tuileries Gardens on another, the 
Champs Elysees leading from it in one direction, and 
the Rue de Rivoli in the other. London, as we have 
seen, is a dingy congeries of dingy towns built mostly 
of dingy bricks. Paris is sunny and bright, the streets 
are wide and clean, and the houses are uniformly hand- 
some, being built of a light stone that gives the whole 
city an air of elegance. No doubt it is the most beautiful 
city in the world, it has a glitter and sparkle unmatched 
elsewhere, — but, gay as it seems, it has more suicides 
than any other city. 
«ru . A A We submitted to it, but could not enjoy 

What we did ' ■> •' 

not like the French pustom of taking our morning 

about Paris, ^.^jj^ ^^^ coffec in bed. There are many 

other French customs constantly in evidence in Paris, 
but not to be described here, to which I trust our English 
and American people will never become accustomed. 
Modesty is not prominent among the virtues of the 
French, though of course there must be many good people 
among them. Vice flaunts itself more in Paris than in 
any city I have ever seen. There is a certain brazen 
shamelessness even in French art that one does not see 
in New York or London. But the collection in the Louvre 
is one of the richest aggregations of antiquarian and 
artistic objects in the world, and surely no museum was 
ever so splendidly housed. The Moabite Stone, the oldest 
extant Hebrew inscription, wac one cf the things that we 
made a point of seeing. As we passed to another part of 
the great building, we had the pleasure of seeing the cele- 
brated DeWet and the other Boer generals who were 
visiting Paris at that time. 

In the rear of the Louvre stands the church of St. 
Germain I'Auxerrois. It was from the bell-tower of this 
church that the signal was given for the Massacre of 



PARIS AND THE HUGUENOTS. 201 

St. Bartholomew. On the other side of the Rue de RivoH, 
and in plain view of this fateful tower, stands the pure 
white marble statue of Admiral Coligni, the most illus- 
trious victim of that fearful massacre. What France 
needs to-day is the influence of that Huguenot element 
which she slaughtered and expelled at that time. 

Several names which are now among the 
Name and the Hiost illustrious in the history of the world 
Huguenot were originally used as terms of re- 

proach. When Abram left his home in 
Chaldea and crossed the great boundary stream between 
the East and the West and settled in Palestine, the Ca- 
naanites dubbed him "the Hebrew," that is, the man who 
crossed over the Euphrates — intruder, interloper. But 
for ages "Hebrew" has been the honored designation of 
one of the most gifted and enterprising of the races of 
mankind. It is not unlikely that the name "Christian" 
was first applied in a contemptuous sense to the disciples 
of our Lord at Antioch. It is well known that the name 
of "Methodist," which is now the honored designation 
of a large, active and devoted body of the people of God, 
was at first given to the followers of Wesley in a spirit 
of ridicule and derision. In like manner, the name 
"Huguenot," according to its most probable derivation 
from a French word meaning a kind of hobgoblin of 
darkness, a night-wanderer, was given to the Protestants 
of that country, because there were times in their early 
history when, for fear of persecution, they dared not meet 
except under cover of darkness. But this term of re- 
proach has gathered about itself all the glory that belongs 
to genius and skill in the useful arts, to industry, thrift 
and purity in the home, to patriotic valor on the field 
of battle, and to unpurchasable and unconquerable devo- 
tion to principle, and is now a name that is venerated by 
14 



202 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

every clear-headed and sound-hearted and well-informed 
and unprejudiced person in the world. It is a name which 
will wear forever the red halo of martyrdom. By the 
Massacre of St. Bartholomew alone thirty-five thousand 
names were added to the church's crimson roll of martyrs, 
with that of the great Admiral Coligni leading the list. 
By the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the refusal 
of Louis XIV. to tolerate any exercise of the Protestant 
religion in France, while at the same time punishing 
inexorably all who attempted to escape from France, 
nearly half a million Huguenots were driven into exile, 
sacrificing their homes, their property and their country 
rather than renounce their religion; and Sismondi esti- 
mates that some four hundred thousand others perished 
in prison, on the scaffold, at the galleys, and in their 
attempts to escape. 

Paiissy.the On our visit to the celebrated Porcelain 

Potter. Works at Sevres, a few miles below Paris 

on the Seine, our interest centered less in any of the 
works of art shown inside than in the fine bronze figure 
in front of the building which represents Bernard Palissy, 
natural philosopher, chemist, geologist, artist, political 
economist. Christian hero and author, of whom Lamar- 
tine himself said, "This potter was one of the greatest 
writers of the French tongue. Montaigne does not excel 
him in freedom, Rousseau in vigor. La Fontaine in grace, 
Bossuet in lyric energy." He was the inventor of en- 
amelled pottery. For fifteen years he pursued his search 
for the secret of his art, scorned as a visionary, suspected 
of being a counterfeiter, reproached by his wife for the 
scanty living he provided for his family, sitting by his 
fire for six successive days and nights without changing 
his clothes, and, in his last desperate experiment, when 



PARIS AND THE HUGUENOTS. 203 

fuel began to run short and still the enamel did not melt, 
rushing into the house, breaking up his furniture and 
hurling that into the furnace to keep up the heat — his 
long and furious search being rewarded at last by the 
appearance of the beautiful white glaze which has made 
him famous. His transcendant merits as an artist were 
then fully recognized, and the Duke of Montmorency and 
Catherine de Medici became his patrons, the latter ap- 
pointing him to decorate the gardens of the palace of the 
Tuileries. But in the meantime he had founded the Re- 
formed Church at Saintes, and had revolutionized the 
morals of the community. He was seized, dragged from 
his home, and hurried off by night to be punished as a 
heretic. And the most brilliant genius of France would 
certainly have been burnt, as hundreds of others were, 
but for the accidental circumstance that the Duke of 
Montmorency was in urgent need of enamelled tiles for 
his castle floor, and Palissy was the only man in the 
world capable of executing them. 

Few scenes in history can match that in the Bastile 
when this aged and gifted man lay chained to the floor, 
and Henry HI., standing over him, and referring to the 
forty-five years of faithful and splendid service which 
Palissy had rendered, said, "I am now compelled to leave 
you to your enemies, and to-morrow you will be burnt 
unless you become a Roman Catholic." Then the fearless 
answer: "Sire, you have often said you pity me. I now 
pity you. 'Compelled !' It is not spoken like a king. 
These girls, my companions, and I, who have a portion 
in the kingdom of heaven, will teach you royal language. 
/ cannot be compelled to do wrong. Neither you nor the 
Guises will know how to compel a potter to bow the knee 
to images." 



204 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

„,^ „ , French Protestantism is rich also in memo- 

other Huguenot 

Heroes and ries of hcrolc womcn. There is the record, 
Heroines. ^^^ example, of Charlotte de Laval, sitting 
by her husband. Admiral Coligni, on the balcony of their 
castle, and asking, "Husband, Vv^hy do you not openly 
avow your faith, as your brother Andelot has done?" 
"Sound your own soul," was his reply; "are you pre- 
pared to be chased into exile with your children, and 
to see your husband hunted to the death ? I will give you 
three weeks to consider, and then I will take your advice." 
She looked at him a moment through her tears, and said, 
"Husband, the three weeks are ended; do your duty, 
and leave us to God." The world knows well the sequel. 
Surely no right-minded person can refuse to honor 
such sacrifices for principle, such loyalty to conscience, 
such devotion to Christ. The Huguenots could have 
remained peaceful and prosperous in their own country 
had they but been willing to conform to the Romish 
religion. 

The views I am expressing are not detennined merely 
by my Protestant birth and training. In proof of this, 
let me quote to you the words of the Duke of Saint Simon, 
himself a Roman Catholic and a courtier of Louis XIV. : 
"The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes ... as well 
as the various proscriptions that followed, were the fruits 
of that horrible conspiracy which depopulated a fourth 
part of the kingdom, ruined its trade, weakened it 
throughout, surrendered it for so long a time to open and 
avowed pillage by the dragoons, and authorized the tor- 
ments and sufferings by means of which they procured 
the death of so many persons of both sexes and by thou- 
sands together. ... A plot that caused our manu- 
factures to pass over into the hands of foreigners, made 
their states to flourish and grow populous at the expense 



PARIS AND THE HUGUENOTS. 205 

of our own, and enabled them to build new cities. A plot 
that presented to the nations the spectacle of so vast a 
multitude of people, who had committed no crime, pro- 
scribed, denuded, fleeing, wandering, seeking an asylum 
afar from their country. A plot that consigned the noble, 
the wealthy, the aged, those highly esteemed for their 
piety, their learning, their virtue, those accustomed to a 
life of ease, frail, delicate, to hard labor in the galleys, 
under the driver's lash, and for no reason save that of 
their religion." 

Such are the blistering words of this eminent Roman 
Catholic nobleman in regard to the policy of the church 
of which he was a member. If a fair-minded member 
of that communion can thus condemn these horrible 
iniquities and thus extol the persecuted Huguenots as the 
best people in France, surely no Protestant should ever 
hesitate about recognizing clearly the world's debt to this 
pure and heroic people. And no well-informed Protestant 
ever does. The Rev, Dr. Croly, of the Church of Eng- 
land, late rector of St. Stephens, in London, expresses 
the opinion of all who know the facts when he says: 
"The Protestant Church of France was for half a cen- 
tury unquestionably one of the most illustrious churches 
in Europe. It held the gospel in singular purity. Its 
preachers were apostolic. Its people the purest, most 
intellectual and most illustrious of France." 

, , Now that is the church which was all but 

France s Loss 

the World's Stamped out of existence by the fierce per- 
°^*"' secutions of the papacy two hundred years 

ago. And it is the remnant of that glorious church which 
now calls on all Christians to help it to give once more 
the pure gospel to priest-ridden, infidel France, and to 
deliver the nation from that fearful succession of bloody 
revolution^ and Panama scandals and Dreyfus outrages 



2o6 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

and shameless immoralities which have so largely con- 
stituted the history of that unhappy land since it butchered 
and banished the only class of its people who would have 
effectually kept its conscience true, its morality pure, and 
its institutions stable and sound. 

Do we owe the Huguenots anything? Yes, the whole 
world is indebted to them. What France lost the other 
nations gained. The emigration of the Huguenots gave 
a death-blow to several great branches of French industry. 
The population of Nantes was reduced from eighty thou- 
sand to forty thousand, a blow to its prosperity from 
which it has not recovered to this day. Of twelve thou- 
sand artisans engaged in the manufacture of silk at Lyons, 
nine thousand went to Switzerland. The most skilled 
artisans, the wealthiest merchants, the bravest sailors and 
soldiers, the most eminent scholars and scientists went by 
thousands to Germany, Holland, England, enriching those 
lands in money and morals beyond computation. 

The cause of civil and religious liberty is deeply in- 
debted to the Huguenots. It was Oliver Cromwell, "the 
greatest prince that ever ruled England," who raised 
Britain to her present position of power and gave her the 
dominion of the seas. But it was William of Orange 
who completed Cromwell's work after the temporary 
reaction in favor of Rome and the Stuarts. It was the 
battle of the Boyne which finally decided that Great 
Britain and America were to be Protestant countries and 
not Romish. And do you know who it was that won the 
day for William on the banks of the Boyne? It was the 
three regiments of Huguenot infantry and the squadron 
of Huguenot cavalry hurled upon the Papists at the 
critical moment by the Huguenot, Marshal Schomberg. 
That is a part of your debt to the Huguenots for the civil 
and religious liberty which you enjoy to-day. 



PARIS AND THE HUGUENOTS. 207 

In the Franco-German War of 1870, many of the 
officers of the victorious army of invasion were descen- 
dants of the Huguenots whom Louis XIV. expa- 
triated. 

"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding 
small ; 
Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds 
he all." 

The King of England himself is of Huguenot blood, 
George I. having married Dorothea, granddaughter of the 
Marquis d'Olbreuse, who was one of the Huguenot refu- 
gees to Brandenburg after the Revocation. Time would 
fail me to tell of all the scholars, scientists and noblemen 
of England who have sprung from the same great stock, 
such as Grote, the historian of Greece, Sydney Smith, 
the Martineaus, Garrick the actor, and a great number 
of gifted clergymen of the Church of England. 

Many of the French churches established in London 
and other parts of England by the exiles have contributed 
for centuries to the vigorous religious life of Britain. 
For three hundred and fifty years the Presbyterian 
Huguenots and the Episcopal Englishmen have wor- 
shipped in different portions of Canterbury Cathedral, 
and to this day the Huguenot Church at Canterbury con- 
tinues to conduct its worship in the cathedral in French, 
singing the psalms to the old Huguenot tunes. But for 
the most part, the exiles have become merged with the 
English, and their names have been Anglicised. In every 
way Britain has been enriched and blessed by the infusion 
of Huguenot blood and genius. 

Huguenot Strain What America owes to Huguenot immigra- 

in America, tion you kuow. Had the Huguenots given 

us only Hugh Swinton Legare, John Jay, Francis Marion, 



2o8 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

and Commodore Maury, "the pathfinder of the seas," we 
should have owed them an everlasting debt of gratitude. 
But when we remember what they have been in Virginia 
itself — the Maurys, Maryes, Michauxs, Flournoys, 
Dupuys, Fontaines, Moncures, Fauntleroys^, Latanes, 
Mauzys, Lacys, Venables, Dabneys, and many others — 
we cannot fail to see that we are under great and lasting 
obligation to that heroic race, whose banishment, while 
it resulted in the moral ruin of France, resulted in the 
moral enrichment of America. And we should count it a 
privilege to do what we can to retrieve the religious ruin 
of misguided France by giving her once more the pure 
Huguenot gospel. From a statement published by the 
Rev. J. E. Knatz, B. D., Delegate of the Huguenot 
Churches of France to America, I take the following 
facts : 

The Huguenot ^^^ population of France is composed of 
Revival in six hundred thousand Protestants and 

"""■ nearly thirty-nine million Catholics. The 

former are mostly descendants of the Huguenots. In 
spite of centuries of persecution, which reduced them 
to a mere handful, they have not only kept their ground, 
but made important advance. They are the strongest 
bulwark of republican institutions. In the Dreyfus trial, 
they were foremost in forming a better public opinion, 
fighting the hardest for the triumph of truth and justice. 
Lately a Catholic paper had to admit, reluctantly, that 
for the last twenty-five years the war waged against 
intemperance, immorality and other social evils, had been 
the work of the Protestants. 

Outside of France the Huguenots carry on a great 
missionary work in the French colonies, which are many 
and extensive. The religious reorganization of Mada- 
gascar alone cost them two hundred thousand dollars. 



PARIS AND THE HUGUENOTS. 209 

In France they have to care for the spiritual welfare 
of an ever-increasing number of non-Protestant commu- 
nities. The movement toward Protestantism is making 
great progress in the rural districts, the population of 
which, all Catholics, had been hitherto indifferent or 
bigoted. New Huguenot churches are springing up on 
all sides, often in places where Protestant worship had 
been abolished for over two hundred years. 

The tears and blood our fathers shed, the torments 
they suffered on scaffolds and stakes, are bringing forth 
fruit after many years, and "the harvest is truly plen- 
teous." In two departments of Central France alone, 
forty-five villages have, within a single year, besought 
our societies for regular Protestant services. To this 
church extension work alone the French Protestants con- 
tribute one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars 
annually. 

Congregations of two hundred members (not one of 
whom was brought up in the evangelical faith), Sunday- 
schools of fifty children (none of whom a year before 
had ever heard of the Bible), are common results of our 
work. 

Other missionary enterprises have to devise means of 
attracting audiences. With us there is no such difficulty, 
crowds gather wherever we are able to send ministers. 

Where in the whole world could be found so promis- 
ing a mission field — one ready to yield such rich returns ? 
Where could be found people so eager to listen to the 
preaching of the gospel, and to have their children taught 
its lessons? 

As well as a most promising, France is a most im- 
portant mission field. The conversion, within the next 
few years, of some thousands of French people, would 
be of incalculable value to the religious and moral welfare 



210 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

of the world, for France exerts a mighty influence 
throughout the world. Moreover, the outlay would be 
comparatively small. 

There are men willing to bring the Bread of Life to 
the hungering crowds for a mere pittance, prompted, not 
by any worldly motive, but by the Spirit of God. 

The salary of a minister is only four hundred dollars. 
This amount will send one more to some of the many 
localities from which urgent appeals have come; it will 
open a new district to the permanent influence of the 
gospel. 

No movement of such size and promise has been wit- 
nessed in France since the time of the Reformation. It 
is the old light, the eternal light from above, dawning 
again on France, illuminating the approach of a new cen- 
tury and bringing hope for the future. 

Let the Christians of America help the Huguenot 
Church of France in this great work of hers. 

At the American Church in Paris, whose pastor, the 
Rev. Dr. Thurber, showed us many courtesies, we had 
the pleasure, a few days ago, of hearing a very striking 
address by the Rev. Merle DAubigne, son of the well- 
known historian of the Reformation, which abounded 
with equally awakening facts as to the present religious 
condition of France. 

Paris is not only one of the most brilliant, but one 
of the most interesting cities in the world, from almost 
every point of view, and we revelled in its museums and 
monuments ; but its memories of the Huguenots had more 
interest for us than anything else, and we have thought 
it best to devote our space to that subject rather than to 
the Louvre, the tomb of Napoleon, Notre Dame, Ver- 
sailles, Fontainebleau, and the scores of other fascinating 



PARIS AND THE HUGUENOTS. 211 

places and subjects that appeal to one's interest in this 
ancient, gay, and terrible city. 

We had a rainy day at Brussels and a cold one on the 
battle-field of Waterloo, but were not deterred from see- 
ing them by these conditions of the weather. Then, with 
a comfortable feeling, almost like the feeling one has on 
coming home after journeying in strange lands, we 
crossed from Roman Catholic France and Belgium into 
Protestant Holland. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 
The Making of Holland. 

The Hague, October 22, 1902. 

THERE is an endless variety of interest in the different 
countries of the Old World. Each has its own fas- 
cination for travellers. But, after all, the strangest, 
quaintest, cleanest and most picturesque country in 
Europe is Holland — little, wet, flat, energetic, heroic 
Holland. By calling it picturesque I do not mean that 
nature has made it so. There are no bold cliffs over- 
looking the sea, no heathery hills reflecting themselves 
in placid lakes, no soaring mountains, forest-clad or snow- 
capped, no waterfalls foaming and thundering among the 
rocks. It is not what nature has done, but what man has 
done, that makes Holland so picturesque. There is no 
country on the globe for which nature has done so little 
and man has done so much. By an energy and industry 
unsurpassed in the annals of the world, the Dutchman 
has wrested his land from the ocean itself, walling out 
its wild waves with huge dykes, and has converted this 
swamp into a blooming paradise, studded all over with 
prosperous farms and opulent cities. 
A Land below As the two most common names of this 
Sea Level. country themselvcs suggest, Holland mean- 
ing Hollow Land, and Netherlands meaning Lowlands, 
the greater part of it is from twenty to thirty feet below 
the level of the ocean; that is to say, the sea actually 
rolls some ten yards higher than the ground on which the 
people live. Hence the common remark, in which, how- 
ever", there is some exaggeration, that the frog, croaking 



THE MAKING OF HOLLAND. 213 

among the bulrushes, looks down upon the swallow on 
the housetops, and that the ships float high above the 
chimneys of the houses. 
Water as Of course, then, there is the ever-present 

an Enemy, danger that the ocean will break in and 
again overspread all this fair territory where its waters 
once rolled, and only by the most remarkable ingenuity, 
the most incessant vigilance, and the most untiring indus- 
try can it be prevented from doing so. Water is the im- 
memorial enemy of the Dutch. They are trained at col- 
lege to fight against water, as in other lands soldiers are 
trained to fight against the human foes of their country. 
They are compelled to wage a perpetual battle for their 
very existence, for, as some one has expressed it, as soon 
as they cease to pump they begin to drown. It costs the 
Dutch people about six million dollars a year to keep their 
country above water, or, to speak more accurately, to 
keep the water above it. If one wishes to appreciate the 
imminence of this danger, he has only to stand for a few 
minutes at the foot of one of the great dykes on the coast, 
at high tide, and listen to the waves dashing against the 
outer side of the barrier, twenty feet above his head. 
Dykes as Of coursc, the explanation of all this lies in 

Protectors, the fact that Holland is of alluvial forma- 
tion. Like Lower Egypt and some other regions at the 
mouths of great rivers, it is a delta land, the soil of which 
has been carried down from the interior by the Rhine 
and deposited here, little by little, in the course of the 
ages; so that Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have laid 
claim to the country on the whimsical plea that it was 
land robbed from other countries which were his by right 
of conquest. Moreover this particular delta lies farther 
below sea level than any other, Holland, as a whole, being 
the lowest country in the world. These vast and costly 



214 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

embankments are therefore absolutely necessary to shut 
the ocean out and keep it out. The Dutch proverb says, 
"God made the sea, we made the shore." 

But that is not all. In many places the dykes are no 
less necessary to prevent the country from being over- 
flowed by the rivers, the beds of which have been gradu- 
ally raised by alluvial deposits, so that now the surface 
of the water is considerably above the level of the sur- 
rounding country, as is the case in our own land with 
the Mississippi river at New Orleans. 
How Dykes Thcsc hugc ramparts, by which the sea has 

are made. been made to obey the command of Canute, 
sometimes rise to a height of not less than thirty-six feet, 
and rest upon massive foundations a hundred and fifty feet 
wide. They are made of earth, sand and mud thoroughly 
consolidated so as to be impervious to water, and the sur- 
face is covered with interwoven willow twigs, the inter- 
stices being filled with clay, and the whole thus bound 
into a solid mass. Many of the dykes are planted with 
trees, the roots of which help to bind the materials of 
the structure more firmly together. Others are protected 
by bulwarks of masonry or by stakes driven along the 
sides, the surface being covered with turf. 

In addition to the directly aggressive action 

Sand Dunes. . , , , , , , , 

of the water, the sea has made trouble for 
the Hollanders in another way. Along the coast, low 
sand hills, from thirty to a hundred and fifty feet high, 
have been thrown up by the action of the wind and the 
waves, and, as these dunes, if left to themselves, are 
continually changing their shape, shifting their position, 
and scattering their loose sand over the fertile land adja- 
cent, the people, in order to prevent this, sow them an- 
nually with reed-grass and other plants which will sprout 
in such poor soil, and the roots, spreading and intertwin- 



THE MAKING OF HOLLAND. 215 

ing in every direction, gradually consolidate the sand, 
form a substratum of vegetable soil, and convert the arid 
sand dunes into stable and productive agricultural regions. 
Having thus made his land by walling out 
the sea and the rivers, and by anchoring 
those portions of it which were too much disposed to 
travel about, the Dutchman's next task was to provide 
drains for removing the superfluous water from the culti- 
vated land, fences for enclosing the portion belonging to 
each individual farmer and separating it from that of his 
neighbor, and highways for communication and traffic 
between the different parts of the country. By means of 
canals he made the conquered water serve all three of 
these purposes. The whole country is a network of canals, 
which stretch their shining lengths in every direction, 
and which are of all sizes, from the main thoroughfares, 
sixty feet wide and six feet deep, along which glide the 
great barges laden with merchandise and drawn by sedate 
horses, down to the ditches of five or six feet which 
mark the boundaries of separate farms or divide the fields 
of each farmer from one another, canals being used in 
this way as uniformly as hedges and fences are in other 
lands. 

Remembering, as already stated, that not 
only the surface of the water, but the beds 
of the larger canals are often considerably above the level 
of the surrounding country, it will be seen that the 
problem of drainage was not an easy one. The Dutch 
solved it by making the wind work for them. On every 
hand are seen windmills, larger and stronger here than 
in any other country, swinging their huge arms, and 
pumping up the superfluous water from the low lying 
ground to the canals, which carry it to the sea. These 
mills are used also for grinding grain, cutting tobacco, 



2i6 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

sawing timber, manufacturing paper, and many other 
things for which we use water mills or steam mills. 

Of late, however, windmills have been to a 
large extent superseded by steam engines for 
purposes of drainage, especially in the making of polders, 
as they call the marshes or lakes, the beds of which have 
been reclaimed by draining. In this process, which is 
still actively carried on by speculators, the morass or 
lake to be drained is first enclosed with a dyke to prevent 
the entrance of any water from without. Then the water 
within is removed by means of peculiarly constructed 
water-wheels, driven by steam engines. Sometimes the 
lake is so deep that the water cannot be lifted directly 
to the main canal, and thus be carried off, and when this 
is the case a series of dykes and canals at different levels 
has to be made, and the water transferred successively 
from one to another. The land thus reclaimed is won- 
derfully fertile, since in wet seasons superfluous water 
can always be quickly removed, and in dry seasons thor- 
ough irrigation can be effected still more easily and 
quickly. 

If these polders could be looked down upon from a 
balloon, they would have a very artificial appearance, 
something like gigantic checker-boards, as they have been 
mapped out with mathematical precision, divided into 
rectangular plots by straight canals and straight rows of 
trees, and furnished with houses all built on exactly the 
same pattern. 

The most stupendous work of this kind ever projected 
is the proposed construction of an embankment which 
would convert the Zuider Zee into a vast lagoon, with 
an area of 1,400 square miles, two-thirds of which could 
be made into a polder. It is estimated that the work 
would cost $75,000,000. 



THE MAKING OF HOLLAND. 217 

It is evident, therefore, that this little nation, which 
has accomplished such wonders in making its own land 
and in keeping it from being swallowed up by the sea 
after it was made, and which has in the past done such 
great things for liberty and learning, for manufactures 
and commerce, is still capable of great enterprises. 
Entering No boy or girl who has read Hans Brinker 

Holland. qt the SUvcr Skates can ever think of Hol- 
land with indifference. No man or woman who has read 
Motley's stirring history of the heroic little republic in 
the Rhine delta can ever enter the Netherlands without 
a feeling of the liveliest interest. No lover of liberty who 
recalls the sufferings and services of the Dutch Calvinists 
in the cause of freedom, and the glorious victory they 
achieved against tremendous odds, can set foot on that 
sacred soil without a thrill of reverent gratitude. 
The Scenery Such wcrc somc of the memories with 
and the Scenes, which our hearts were warmed as our train 
from Brussels began to cross the bridges over the broad 
estuaries that make in from the sea through the low, flat 
country, in the neighborhood of Dordrecht and Rotter- 
dam, and to run through an unmistakably Dutch land- 
scape, with bright green fields divided into rectangular 
sections by hundreds of shining canals, and occupied by 
innumerable herds of black and white Holstein cattle, 
not a few of them actually wearing jackets, apparently 
made of burlaps or bagging, to protect them from the 
dampness ; with level roads running along the tops of the 
dykes several yards above the surrounding country, and 
sedate looking horses drawing old-fashioned wagons, and 
brisk looking dogs drawing clattering milk carts, with 
their cargo of burnished cans ; with innumerable rows 
of willow trees, the twigs of which the people use to make 
the covering of the dykes, and the wood of which they 
15 



2i8 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

use to make their heavy, pointed shoes, or sabots; with 
picturesque houses roofed with red tiles, and broad-built 
peasants working in the fields, wearing those same wooden 
sabots, and clean looking market women trudging into 
the towns in their exceedingly picturesque head-dress of 
gold helmets covered with lace caps; with stiff, sym- 
metrical gardens, and trees clipped into fantastic shapes; 
with quaint old church steeples and gilded weather-cocks ; 
and ever and anon a weather-beaten windmill swinging 
its great arms between us and the low horizon. This was 
Holland, beyond a doubt. 

An interesting indication of the important 

Rotterdam. , 111 • 1 1 

part played by the dykes m the development 
of Holland is the number of towns which have been named 
from the dyke or dam originally built on a site, such 
as Rotterdam, Schiedam, Amsterdam, and so on. The 
first important place we passed was Rotterdam, the most 
active seaport of Holland, with a population of three hun- 
dred and twenty thousand, and from the high railway 
bridge on which we crossed the Maas we had a good 
view of the boompjes, as they call the magnificent quays, 
which, with their graceful fringe of trees and their tangled 
forest of shipping, line the banks of the river for a mile 
and a half. We caught a glimpse also of the bronze 
statue of Erasmus, the Dutch scholar, who, as some say, 
"laid the egg which Luther hatched." On a former visit 
to Rotterdam I had seen the birthplace of this illustrious 
man, bearing on its front the inscription, "Haec est parva 
doinns, magnns qua nattis Erasmus" (this is the little 
house in which great Erasmus was born.) 

The Hague Leaving Rotterdam, we pass on our left 
Delftshaven, from which a party of the Pil- 
grim Fathers sailed to America in 1620; then Schiedam, 
noted for its "schnapps," of which there are more than 



THE MAKING OF HOLLAND. 219 

two hundred distilleries; then Delft, where William the 
Silent, the immortal founder of Dutch independence, was 
assassinated by a Jesuit whom the Roman Catholic per- 
secutors of the Netherlands had hired to rid them of 
their great foeman, but which, I fear, is better known 
to some of my readers as the place where a certain blue- 
glazed earthenware used to be made in imitation of 
Chinese 'porcelain ; and then, fifteen miles from Rotter- 
dam, The Hague, one of the handsomest towns in Hol- 
land, with the Royal Palace, and in a lovely park outside 
the city the royal villa, called The House in the Wood, 
and two miles away on the sea the fashionable watering- 
place of Scheveningen, and in the city itself scrupulously 
clean and bright houses on every hand, where its two 
hundred thousand people live, and, above all, the picture 
gallery, with its two world-renowned paintings by Rem- 
brandt and Potter, to say nothing of others scarcely infe- 
rior, if at all so, such as Vermeer's "View of Delft," with 
its red and blue roofs partly lit up with yellow sunlight, 
a simple view which "is perhaps unmatched by any other 
landscape in the world for the truthfulness of its atmos- 
pheric and light effects and for the vigor and brilliance 
of its coloring." Paul Potter's "Young Bull" is a mar- 
vellous picture, but the one which demands and repays 
the longest study is Rembrandt's "School of Anatomy," 
which shows us the celebrated Nicolaas Tulp, in black 
coat, lace collar and broad-brimmed soft hat, explaining 
the anatomy of the arm of a corpse to a body of surgeons, 
who listen to the lecture with the most life-like expres- 
sions, and which has been happily characterized as the 
truest and most life-like representation of the "working 
of intellect" ever produced. 

A Presbyterian -^s wc had reminded ourselves when visit- 
Government, ing the royal residenccs that the young and 



220 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

beloved Queen Wilhelmina is the only Presbyterian Queen 
in the world, so we reminded ourselves when visiting the 
Chambers of the States General that Holland is the only 
country in the world which has the good tortune to have 
a Presbyterian preacher for its Prime Minister. Of 
course, other countries have Presbyterian laymen for 
prime ministers, Mr. Balfour of Great Britain, for ex- 
ample, but Holland is the only one that has placed the 
helm of the state in the hands of a preacher. His name 
is the Rev. Dr. Abraham Kuyper, and he is one of the 
ablest and most versatile men in the world. His recent 
book on The Holy Spirit is the greatest monograph on 
that subject that has appeared since the work of John 
Owen. He has rendered a great service to the cause of 
vital religion in checking the rationalistic views of such 
men as Professor Kuenen, and strongly reasserting the 
evangelical doctrines to which Holland has been so deeply 
indebted in the past for the heroic character of her people, 
and the glorious position she holds in the history of human 
freedom. Though the Chambers were not in session when 
we visited the Binnenhof, we took special pleasure in 
having even the chair of Dr. Kuyper pointed out to us. 

Unpresb terian "^^^ ^^^ ^^y' ^^^ Cathedrals and other great 
Church churches of Holland erected before the 

Buildings. Reformation strikingly illustrate how unfit 
such structures are for Christian worship, according to 
the simple New Testament model, especially for preaching 
the gospel. They are adapted only to the spectacular 
ceremonies of the Roman Catholics and other ritualists. 
Therefore, any Protestant community which has had the 
misfortune to inherit a cathedral from the unreformed 
period has an elephant on its hands. The Dutch people, 
being mostly Presbyterians, have had this experience, and, 
finding themselves unable to make the most effective use 



THE MAKING OF HOLLAND. 221 

of these great buildings erected for Romish rites, have 
allowed them to assume a very unattractive, dreary and 
barn-like appearance on the inside. 

The question may shock our aesthetic friends, but, 
notwithstanding the incalculable loss to art, .would it not 
have been better for the world if the Protestant countries 
at the time of the Reformation had macadamized all their 
cathedrals? And if any one hesitates to answer in the 
affirmative, let him consider carefully the connection be- 
tween the modes of worship, and the character of the 
worshipper, and let him explain to himself clearly why 
it is that the countries which have adopted the Protestant 
model, with its steady appeal to the reason, and its earnest 
insistence upon intelligent apprehension of the truth, are 
the cleanest, safest, thriftiest and strongest countries in 
the world, while those which have adopted the Romish 
model, with its constant appeal to the aesthetic sensibilities, 
and its millinery, music, processions, incense, and "vain 
repetitions," are precisely the countries which have suf- 
fered the greatest material and moral deterioration, and 
which were not long ago contemptuously characterized 
by Lord Salisbury, the late Premier of Great Britain, as 
"decaying nations." 



CHAPTER XXV. 

Leyden's University, Haarlem's Flowers, and Am- 
sterdam's Commerce. 

Utrecht, October 25, 1902. 

"1X7" E gave only one day to Leyden, ten miles from The 
' ^ Hague, but it was one of the most interesting 
days we have had in Europe. Taking a guide at the 
railway station, we traversed the quaint streets and 
crossed and recrossed the multitudinous canals, and 
climbed to the top of the great fortified circular mound 
of earth in the centre of the city, called the Burg, the 
foundations of which date from the tenth century, and 
from the top of which we had a unique view of the heroic 
old town and the peaceful homes of its fifty-four thousand 
people. 

But one does not go far in Leyden without 

The Great Siege. , . . , , . , ., , 

bemg remmded of the terrible siege to 
which it was subjected by the Spaniards in 1574. One 
such reminder is the bronze statue of the gallant Mayor 
Van der Werf, who defended the city in that siege and 
would listen to no suggestion of surrender. Another is 
an inscription on the front of the Stadhuis, which, trans- 
lated, reads: "When the black famine had brought to 
the death nearly six thousand persons, then God the Lord 
repented and gave us bread again as much as we could 
wish" ; and which in the original Dutch is an ingenious 
chronogram, the capital letters as Roman numerals giving 
the date, and the one hundred and thirty-one letters used 
in the original indicating the number of days during 
which the siege lasted. But, after a short and partial 
relief, the siege was continued in the form of a blockade 



LEYDEN'S UNIVERSITY. 223 

for many dreadful months. William of Orange finally 
cut the dykes and flooded the country, and relieved the 
famished city by ships. 

A Unique Re- The story of Lcyden which made the deep- 
ward of Valor, ggt imprcssion upon me as a boy was that of 
William's offering to reward the citizens for this gallant 
defence either by exempting them from taxes for a certain 
number of years or by the establishment of a university 
in their city. To their everlasting honor they chose the 
latter, even in that time of distress and poverty, and the 
University was founded in 1575. Of course we wished 
to see the University which had such a history as that, 
to say nothing of the fact that we had heard of Leyden 
jars ever since we began the study of electricity at college, 
and that we knew something of a few of the men whose 
genius has at different periods since made the faculty one 
of the most illustrious in Europe, such as "the learned 
Scaliger," the famous physician Boerhaave, Arminius and 
Gomar, champions, respectively, of the two theological 
schools known as Arminians or Remonstrants and Cal- 
vinists, which in 1618 brought their differences to debate 
in the famous Synod of Dort ; and, as is always the case 
when an opportunity for thorough discussion on the basis 
of Scripture is given, the result was a victory for the 
Calvinists. We remembered also with pleasure that 
Oliver Goldsmith, author of the immortal Vicar of Wake- 
field, was for a time a student at the University of Leyden ; 
and we recalled with less pleasure that in our own day 
the faculty of the institution had furnished one of the 
boldest advocates of the destructive criticism of the Old 
Testament, Professor Abraham Kuenen. 
Plain College ^^ ^^^ ^ Satisfaction to see it, though there 
Buildings is little to see; this University, like most 
Abroad. ^^ thosc ou the Continent, having very indif- 



224 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

ferent buildings and appointments. The men who some- 
times "kick" in American colleges and seminaries because 
the class-rooms and dormitories do not suit them, to say 
nothing of their board, would get a superabundance of 
that sort of exercise if they had to attend the average 
Dutch or German university. In fact, it has been inti- 
mated at times that there are men in American colleges 
and seminaries who belong to that class of people of whom 
it was suggested that they would grumble even after get- 
ting to heaven on the ground that their haloes didn't fit. 
Fortunately, however, these are very few, the great ma- 
jority of our American students being not spoiled and 
fussy children, but manly, sensible, hard working, plain 
living, high thinking men. 
. . „ . . Before leaving Leyden we made a point of 

John Robinson _ . 

andthePii- visiting the house in which the Rev. John 
grim Fathers. R^bingon livcd. He was the leader of the 
first Puritans who were banished from England, and who, 
like the adherents of every other persecuted faith, found 
toleration and liberty in Calvinistic Holland. A bronze 
tablet affixed to the wall of the church on the opposite 
side of the street contains a bas-relief of the Mayflower, 
and states that it was at Mr. Robinson's prompting that 
the Pilgrim Fathers went forth to settle New England 
in 1620. 

Horse Flesh As we passcd with our guide through what 
as Food, looked like an open-air beef market, he sur- 
prised us not a little by telling us that what the people 
were buying there was not beef, but horse flesh, which is 
much cheaper, adding that the worn-out dray horses and 
car horses of the English cities were regularly bought 
and shipped to Holland to be sold to the poor instead of 
beef. No doubt the people of Leyden became accustomed 
to much worse fare than that when, during the great siege 



HAARLEM'S FLOWERS. 225 

of 1574, the Spaniards were trying to starve them into 
resubmission to Roman Catholicism. But those conditions 
no longer exist, and the idea of eating horse flesh as a 
regular thing is not one which commends itself to our 
feelings. 

This place, seventeen miles from Leyden, 
also had experience of the tender mercies of 
the papal soldiery when, in 1573, after a gallant defence of 
seven months, it fell into the hands of the Spaniards, and 
the entire garrison, the Protestant ministers of the gospel, 
and two thousand of the townspeople were executed. 
Haarlem is now, and has been for two hundred and fifty 
years, famous for its horticulture. It supplies bulbs to 
every part of the world, and in the spring the nurseries 
around the city are ablaze with the brilliant blooms of 
the tulips, hyacinths, crocuses and lilies, whole fields of 
them in every variety of color, like vast natural flags of 
the brightest hues, lying on the flat surface of the country, 
and the whole atmosphere is impregnated with their de- 
licious fragrance. 
A Flower Two ceuturics and a half ago, at the time 

Boom. of the "Tulip Mania," there was as wild 

speculation in bulbs as there has ever been in our day 
in stocks. Enormous prices were paid for the rarer bulbs. 
For instance, a single bulb of the species called "Semper 
Augustus" was sold for five thousand two hundred dol- 
lars. This statement will not seem incredible to any of 
my readers who have had bitter experience with the 
fictitious values created by the "booms" which cursed and 
crippled so many of our Southern communities a few 
years ago. The tulip craze in Holland had the same 
history : the mania subsided, the prices fell, many of the 
speculators were ruined, and before long a "Semper 
Augustus" could be bought for twenty dollars. Even that 



226 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

will seem to most people a pretty high price for a single 
tulip bulb. 
A Small We did not stop at Haarlem, as it was not 

Country. |.j^g right scasou for the gorgeous display of 
flowers above referred to, that is, the latter part of April 
and the beginning of May, but pushed on to Amsterdam, 
which is only ten miles away. If the reader has taken 
account of the distances between these populous cities as 
they have been successively mentioned, and has observed 
how short they are, he will have received a very strong 
impression of the smallness of the country. 

Amsterdam, the largest city in Holland, 

Amsterdam. . , , . . i . i r m 

With a population of more than half a mil- 
lion, is built upon nearly a hundred islands, separated 
from one another by a network of canals and connected 
by means of some three hundred bridges, and is, therefore, 
sometimes spoken of as "a vulgar Venice," but, with its 
prodigious vitality, its crowded streets, its busy waters, 
and its financial eminence, it must be far more like the 
Venice which was Queen of the Adriatic some centuries 
ago than the stagnant and melancholy town which bears 
that name to-day. 
Odoriferous The watcr in the canals is about three feet 
Canals. deep, and below this is a layer of mud of 

the same thickness. It is said that, in order to prevent 
malarial exhalations, the water is constantly renewed from 
an arm of the North Sea Canal and the mud removed by 
dredging. I hope this process is effective, but there 
were unmistakable exhalations from the canals when we 
were there. Whether they were malarial or not I cannot 
say, but certainly they were unfragrant to a degree. Still, 
the evil smells of Amsterdam are not to be named in 
number and vigor with those of Venice. 



AMSTERDAM'S COMMERCE. 227 

A City Built As in Venice, so here, all the houses are built 
on stakes, qh piles which are driven fifteen or twenty 
feet through the loose sand near the surface into the firmer 
layers below. Hence the jest of Erasmus, that he knew 
a city whose inhabitants dwelt on the tops of trees like 
rooks. They are not so secure on their perch, however, 
as the rooks. For, although the preparations underground 
are often more costly than the buildings afterwards 
erected above, yet, such is the difficulty of securing a 
firm foundation, and such the ravages of the wood worm 
among the fir-tree piles after they are driven into the sand 
and built upon, that many of the brick houses which were 
once erect are now considerably out of the perpendicular, 
and lean backwards or forwards or sideways, according 
as the piles have given way at one place or another. In 
1822 thirty-four hundred tons of grain were stored in a 
grain magazine originally built for the East India Com- 
pany, and, the piles being unable to sustain the weight, 
the building literally sank down into the mud. 
The Business Bcsidcs its importance as a mart for the 
of Amsterdam, tobacco, sugar, ricc, spices, and other pro- 
duce of the Dutch colonies in the East Indies, West Indies 
and South America (which, by the way, have a popula- 
tion of thirty-five million, that is, seven times as many 
as the little mother country), Amsterdam has a number 
of important industrial establishments, such as ship-yards, 
sugar and camphor refineries, cobalt-blue and candle fac- 
tories, machine shops, breweries, and especially diamond- 
polishing mills, of which last there are no less than 
seventy, employing in all about ten thousand men. We 
visited one of these mills and watched the process for a 
few minutes. 

The Jewish The art of polishing diamonds was intro- 

Quarter. duccd here in the sixteenth century by For- 



228 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

tuguese Jews, who, driven from their former homes by 
papal persecution, found in Protestant Holland an asylum, 
and, like the oppressed adherents of other creeds, secured 
the full religious toleration which they craved. They have 
ever since constituted an important part of the population 
of Amsterdam, and now number about thirty-five thou- 
sand. One of the interesting episodes of our visit was a 
drive through the poorer Jewish Quarter, with its swarms 
of untidy men, women and children. In this quarter and 
of this stock Spinoza, the philosopher, was born ; and in 
this quarter, though not of this stock, Rembrandt, the 
painter, lived for fifteen years, in a house marked by a 
tablet, which those who are specially interested in art 
always wish to see. 

HomeofPresi- Utrccht, twcuty-two milcs from Amster- 
dentKruuer. dam, is an attractive city of one hundred 
thousand inhabitants. It interested us chiefly as the centre 
of the Jansenists, the redoubtable Roman Catholic adver- 
saries of the Jesuits, and as the peaceful home of ex- 
President Kruger since his withdrawal from the stormy 
experiences of his life in South Africa. This venerable 
man, so remarkable on account of his public career, is of 
special interest to any one connected with Union Semi- 
nary in Virginia, because it was under the ministry of a 
former student of our Seminary, the late Dr. Daniel Lind- 
ley, who went as a missionary to South Africa more than 
sixty years ago, that Mr. Kruger was brought into the 
church. He lives in great comfort on the famous Malie- 
ban, which, with its triple row of lime trees, is one of 
the loveliest residential districts in Europe. 
Queer Customs It sccms odd that in a country where there 
in Holland, jg SO much watcr, there should be so little 
that is fit to drink, and that in a country where land is so 
valuable the people should use any part of it for fuel, 



DUTCH CITIES. 229 

and yet, not only does one constantly see dog-carts con- 
taining barrels of fresh water and loads of peat passing 
hither and thither in the towns, but at cellar doors in 
the side streets sign-boards are seen announcing "water 
and fire to sell," and at these places the poorer classes 
buy the boiling water or red-hot turf that they need to 
make their tea or coffee. Foot-warmers are very gener- 
ally used by the Dutch women, and in some of the 
churches we saw immense numbers of these little fire- 
boxes. 

The Comfort of This rcminds me to say, for the benefit of 
a Hot Water ^Luy of my readers who may be planning a 

Bottle. / _-' , , • 

trip to Europe, that two things are more 
conducive to comfort and health than a good hot-water 
bottle when one is travelling in Northern or Central 
Europe, for these lands are much colder than ours in 
spring, summer and autumn, and arrangements for heat- 
ing the hotels either do not exist or are utterly ineffeccive. 
American tourists who do not observe this precaution are 
likely to need physic, and, by the way, the universal sign 
for drug stores in Holland is not the mortar and pestle, 
but "the gaper," that is, a painted Turk's head showing 
his tongue. 

In Amsterdam and other Dutch cities many 
Dornestic ^£ ^.j^^ houscs, which are made of brick with 

Store-rooms ' 

in the Top light colorcd painting and have a very sub- 
stones, stantial and neat appearance, are narrow 
and high, standing with ornamented gable ends to the 
street, and have beams projecting from the gables with 
fixtures for hoisting goods to the top stories, which are 
used for store-rooms. These are not business houses, but 
dwelling houses of people well to do, and the windows 
and woodwork from top to bottom are scrupulously clean 
and bright. 



230 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Broeck, in the north of Holland, is said to 

The Original . . , ,,^ , _, ,, -nr i- i 

"Spotless be the original bpotless iown. We did 
Town." j^Qj- yigij- |-j^ig place, but it is thus described 

by a writer in Public Opinion who has done so: 

"The palings of the fences of Broeck are sky-blue. 
The streets are paved with shining bricks of many colors. 
The houses are rose-colored, black, gray, purple, light 
blue or pale green. The doors are painted and gilded. 
For hours you may not see a soul in the streets or at the 
windows. The streets and houses, bridges, windows and 
barns show a neatness and a brilliancy that are absolutely 
painful. 

"At every step a new effect is disclosed, a new scene 
is beheld, as if painted upon the drop-curtain of a stage. 
Everything is minute, compact, painted, spotless and clean. 
In the houses of Broeck for cleaning purposes you will 
find big brooms, little brooms, tooth-brushes, aqua fortis, 
whiting for the window panes, rouge for the forks and 
spoons, coal dust for the copper, emery for the iron uten- 
sils, brick powder for the floors, and even small splinters 
of wood with which to pick out the tiny bits of straw in 
the cracks between the bricks. Here are some of the rules 
of this wonderful town : 

"Citizens must leave their shoes at the door when 
entering a house. 

"Before or after sunset no one is allowed to smoke 
excepting with a pipe having a cover, so that the ashes 
will not be scattered upon the street. 

"Any one crossing the village on horseback must get 
out of the saddle and lead the horse. 

"A cuspidor shall be kept by the front door of each 
house. 

"It is forbidden to cross the village in a carriage, or to 
drive animals through the streets." 



"THE MOTHER OF AMERICA." 231 

Thus, it appears that "Spotless Town" is not merely 
an ideal existing in the imagination of the man who writes 
the very clever verses placarded in our street-cars and 
elsewhere in praise of the cleansing properties of Sapolio, 
but a reality ; and there are numerous places in Holland 
which in point of cleanliness would put to shame any of 
our American towns. 

A Pardonable Some ouc has Said that the Dutch love of 
Mania. clcanliness amounts almost to a monomania, 
and that the washing, scrubbing and polishing to which 
every house is subjected once every week is rather sub- 
versive of comfort. And it would appear from the regula- 
tions above cited that the matter is sometimes pushed to 
extremes. But my experience as a traveller in some parts 
of my own country, as well as in some parts of other 
lands, has made me very tolerant of such a mania as that, 
and, when amid the filth of Venice or Naples, for instance, 
my mind has reverted to these clean Dutch towns, it has 
caused me to sigh — "O si sic ornnes!" 

I cannot resist the temptation to append to 
'^''Bok'In'the ^'^^^^ letters about little, quaint, clean, ener- 
"Mother of gctic, hcroic, learned, unpretentious Holland 
America." ^^^^ extracts from an article of Mr. Ed- 
ward Bok's which I have read since my return to America. 
He refers to the fact that twenty thousand more American 
travellers are said to have visited the Netherlands during 
the past summer than in any previous year, and to the 
fact that there is a rapidly increasing demand for books 
on the history of the Dutch people, as shown by the 
reports of the librarians in American towns, and he 
regards these as specimens of a group of facts which, 
taken together, indicate clearly that the reading world 
of America is beginning to appreciate the real extent of 
the strong Dutch influences which underlie American in- 



2^2 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

stitutions and have shaped American Hfe. He says that 
for years we have written in our histories and taught in 
our schools that this nation is a transplanted England ; 
that the institutions which have made this country dis- 
tinctively great were derived from England. But he 
denies that England is entitled to this honor, and declares 
that the true mother land of America is not England, but 
Holland : 

"Take, for instance, what may be truly designated as 
the four vital institutions upon which America not only 
rests, but which have caused it to be regarded as the most 
distinctive nation in the world. I mean our public-school 
system of free education ; our freedom of religious wor- 
ship ; our freedom of the press ; and our freedom of 
suffrage as represented by the secret ballot. Not one of 
these came from England, since not one of them existed 
there when they were established in America ; in fact, 
only one of them existed in England earlier than fifty 
years after they existed in America, and the other three 
did not exist in England until nearly one hundred years 
after their establishment in America. Each and all of 
these four institutions came to America directly from 
Holland, Take the two documents upon which the whole 
fabric of the establishment and maintenance of America 
rests — the Declaration of Independence and the Federal 
Constitution of the United States — and one, the Declara- 
tion, is based almost entirely upon the Declaration of In- 
dependence of the United Republic of the Netherlands; 
while all through the Constitution its salient points are 
based upon, and some literally copied from, the Dutch 
Constitution. So strong is this Netherland influence upon 
our American form of government that the Senate of 
the United States, as a body, derives most of the pecu- 
liarities of its organization from the Netherlands States 



"THE MOTHER OF AMERICA." 233 

General, a similar body, and its predecessor by nearly a 
century of years, while even in the American flag we find 
the colors and the five-pointed star chosen from the Dutch. 

"The common modern practice of the State allowing 
a prisoner the free services of a lawyer for his defence, 
and the office of a district attorney for each county, are 
so familiar to us that we regard them as American inven- 
tions. Both institutions have been credited to England, 
whereas, as a matter of fact, it is impossible to find in 
England even to-day any official corresponding to our 
district attorney. Both of these institutions existed in 
Holland three centuries before they were brought to 
America. 

"The equal distribution of property among the chil- 
dren of a person dying intestate — that is, without a 
will — was brought to America direct from Holland by 
the Puritans. It never existed in England. 

"The record of all deeds and mortgages in a public 
office, a custom which afifects every man and woman who 
owns or buys property, came to America direct from 
Holland. It never came from England, since it does not 
exist there even at the present day. 

"The township system, by which each town has local 
self-government, with its natural sequence of local self- 
government in county and State, came from Holland. 

"The practice of making prisoners work, and turning 
prisons into workhouses, and, in fact, our whole modern 
American management of free prisons which has caused 
the admiration of the entire world, was brought from 
Holland to America by William Penn. 

"Group these astonishing facts together, if you will, 
and see their tremendous import : The Federal Constitu- 
tion ; the Declaration of Independence ; the whole organ- 
ization of the Senate ; our State Constitutions ; our f ree- 
16 



234 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

dom of religion ; our free schools ; our free press ; our 
written ballot; our town, county and State systems of 
self-government ; the system of recording deeds and mort- 
gages; the giving of every criminal a just chance for 
his life; a public prosecutor of crime in every county; 
our free prison workhouse system — to say nothing of 
kindred important and vital elements in our national life. 
When each and all of these can be traced directly to one 
nation, or to the influence of that nation, and that nation 
not England, is it any wonder, asks one enlightened his- 
torian, that some modern scholars, who, looking beneath 
the mere surface resemblance of language, seek an ex- 
planation of the manifest difference between the people 
of England and the people of the United States assumed 
by them to be of the same blood, and influenced by the 
same (?) institutions? 

"Nor is it strange that so strong a Dutch influence 
should have entered into the establishment and making of 
America, when one considers the immense debt which 
the world owes to Holland. For it may be said without 
fear of contradiction that in nearly every art which uplifts 
and adorns human life, in nearly every aspect of human 
endeavor, Holland has not only added to the moral re- 
sources of mankind and contributed more to the fabric 
of civilization, but has also actually led the way. It was 
the first nation to master the soil and teach agriculture 
to the world. It has taught the world the art of garden- 
ing. It taught commerce and merchandise to the entire 
world when it ranked as the only great commercial nation 
on the globe. It taught the broadest lines of finance to 
the world by the establishment, in 1609, of its great Bank 
of Amsterdam, with one hundred and eighty millions of 
dollars deposits, preceding the establishment of the Bank 
of England by nearly one hundred years. The founding 



"THE MOTHER OF AMERICA." 235 

of its great University of Leyden, in 1575, marked an 
epoch in the world's history of education, and made the 
Netherlands the centre of learning of Europe. Here was 
founded international law through Grotius, one of Hol- 
land's greatest sons. Here Boerhaave, a Dutchman, revo- 
lutionized medicine by his wonderful discoveries until 
Holland's medical school became the seat of authority 
for all Europe. From this centre, too, came that great 
lesson in the publishing of books in the shape of the 
famous Elzevir books. It was the first nation to place 
the reader and the spelling-book in the hands of the child, 
irrespective of station or means. As musicians, for nearly 
two hundred years the Netherlands stood supreme, and 
furnished all the courts of Europe with vocal and instru- 
mental music. It was the Dutch who founded, in Naples, 
the first musical conservatory in the world, and another 
in Venice, and it was to their influence and example that 
the renowned school of Rome owed its existence. 

"The starting of all these masterful influences would 
alone make a nation great. But these were only a part of 
Holland's wonderful contributions to the world's en- 
lightenment. It went on and introduced to the world 
the manufacture of woollen cloth that marked -an epoch 
in history, and followed this up by developing the manu- 
facture of silk, linen, tapestry and lace until it made its 
city of Flanders the manufacturing centre of the world. 
It devised and presented through the Van Eyck brothers 
the wonderful discovery of oil painting, and revolution- 
ized the world of art, and gave, in the person of one of 
these brothers, Jan Van Eyck, the originator of the painted 
portrait. Then came the invention of wood-engraving 
by a Dutchman, followed quickly by the printing of books 
from blocks; the substitution of movable type for the 
solid block of wood, and we have the printing-press — the 



236 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

invention of which Germany may never concede to Hol- 
land, and yet the germ of which lay in the block books 
to which Holland lays unquestioned claim. But Holland 
need never squabble over a single invention. A nation 
that, in addition to what has been cited above, has likewise 
invented the telescope, the microscope, the thermometer, 
the method of measuring degrees of latitude and longi- 
tude, the pendulum clock, thereby putting before the 
world the beginning of anything which we can call accu- 
racy in time, and discovered the capillary circulation of 
the blood, need not stop to split straws. 

There is a wonderful charm in reading the history 
of a people who have done so much toward the enlighten- 
ment of the world, and not alone in one field of thought 
or activity, but in every field of human endeavor. The 
people of no nation make so bold and strong an impression 
on the mind as one after another of their achievements 
pass before one, and especially when it is considered 
that all these contributions to humankind were done with 
one hand while the other was busy in saving every foot 
of land from the rushing waters. But the people always 
remained cool, balanced and solid. That same patient but 
deep, perfervid spirit which built the dykes and saved 
the land with one hand, and opened those same dykes, 
built by the very life-blood of the people, with the other, 
and flooded the land against encroaching enemies — that 
same spirit built up a nation unrivalled in history as a 
financial, commercial, maritime, art, learning, medical and 
political centre, from which have radiated the strongest 
influences for the upbuilding of great empires — not only 
in the new Western world of America, but also in the 
far East of the Indies, and in the strong colonial estab- 
lishment of South Africa. Her glory may be of the past, 
but he is indeed a rash prophet who would predict the 



"THE MOTHER OF AMERICA." 237 

future of any nation, however small, on the face of the 
globe of to-day. Of some things the American traveller 
is to-day constantly convinced: that there is less intel- 
lectual veneer in Holland than in any other country in 
Europe; that there is more solid and abiding culture of 
the very highest kind, and that the modern Dutch family 
represents a repose of mind, a simplicity of living, and 
a contented happiness with life in general that we, as a 
nation, might well envy." 



CHAPTER XXVI. 
Up the Rhine and Over the Alps. 

THE Cologne Cathedral is the finest Gothic structure 
in the world We had a perfect view of the ma- 
jestic exterior from the windows of our hotel, but, of 
course, devoted most of our time to the still more im- 
pressive interior. It is no part of my purpose to descant 
upon these things which are described in all the books 
of travel. The city possesses other objects of interest 
besides its matchless cathedral, and some of them we 
visited, in spite of the weather. It was cold and wet, 
and we did not prolong our stay. But no conditions of 
weather could have deterred us from taking the steamer 
for our trip up the Rhine, rather than the railroad. It 
was late in the season. The summer tourists had long 
since returned to their homes in England and America. 
We had the boat pretty much to ourselves. We could 
hardly have fallen upon a worse day for the first half of 
our trip. It was not only cold, but foggy, and we could 
get only tantalizing glimpses of the shores now and then 
when the mist thinned a little. So it continued nearly all 
the way to Coblentz, where we landed and spent the night. 
We comforted ourselves, however, with the reflection that 
the finest scenery was farther up, and with the hope that 
we should have a better day for that part of the trip. 
And we had. The mist was rolling away rapidly when 
we rose next morning, and it soon disappeared, leaving 
us a fine autumn day. After listening to the exhilarating 
music of a military band which was serenading a young 
general near our hotel and after taking a look at the 



THE RHINE AND THE ALPS. 239 

noble statue of William I., and at the massive fortifications 
of Ehrenbreitstein, the German Gibraltar, on the other 
side of the river, we took the boat in better spirits, ad- 
dressed ourselves with more zest than before to the volume 
of Legends of the Rhine, and thus began a delightful and 
memorable day. 

The chief advantage of making this celebrated trip 
at this season is that one thus gets the opportunity to 
see the vintage of the Rhine Valley as it can be seen at 
no other season. 

"Purple and red, to left, to right, 
For miles the gorgeous vintage blazed." 

Though, as a matter of fact, I believe that most of the 
Rhine grapes that we saw were white. The steep slopes 
of the hills among which the great river winds are cov- 
ered with vineyards, the vines in rows as regular as ranks 
of Indian corn, and laden with millions of luscious 
bunches. The vintagers, men, women and children, in 
picturesque costumes and with huge baskets on their 
backs, were busy everywhere stripping the fruit from 
the yellow vines. The soil is kept in place by stone ter- 
races. Above the line of the vineyards jut out the huge 
rocks of the mountains, their gray bastions alternating 
with forests robed in green, brown, red and yellow, and 
standing out boldly against the pure blue sky. 

It is only by strong self-restraint that I can pass with- 
out special notice such a rock as Rhinestein, such a town 
as Bingen, and such a monument as that to "Germania" 
on the Niederwald, but it must be done. 

November 15, 1902. 
,„. . . . Wiesbaden, the most charming of German 

\Ariesbaden and _ ° 

the German watcring-placcs, is a clean and handsome 
Woods. ^jj.y^ ^^jj.j^ broad and well paved streets, 



240 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

many attractive shops and pleasant residences, excellent 
hotels, extensive and lovely parks, a sumptuous opera 
house, a less costly but very spacious music hall (where, 
by the way, we had the pleasure of hearing Frau Shuman- 
Heink sing), and a few large and costly churches, but 
with no adequate arrangements, so far as I could see, for 
the churching of its large population. The place owes its 
importance primarily to the Boiling Salt Springs, which 
here gush from the earth, and which have made this the 
great resort for rheumatics and the victims of various 
other ailments. It is also the home of one of the most 
celebrated oculists in Europe, whose patients come to him 
from every part of the wcrld. The chief attraction for 
those who are fond of outdoor life is the glorious forests 
which stretch from Wiesbaden back through the valleys 
and over the Taunus Mountains. One of our young 
people has just been writing to the folks at home about 
an eighteen-mile walk through these woods, guided only 
by the blazed trees, and speaks with pardonable enthu- 
siasm of ''the blue-gray trunks outlined against the terra 
cotta carpet of fallen leaves, the sunlight glancing through 
the trees, and the gently waving branches against the 
azure sky. There is no undergrowth as in our forests 
at home, but there are here and there gray rocks, large 
and small, covered with fresh green moss, or with gray, 
pink and yellow lichen. There were rustic benches all 
along, but the forest was quite deserted except for an 
occasional woodman with a fire and piles of neatly 
chopped wood, or some little boys drawing carts filled 
with bundles of sticks for winter use." 

November 20, 1902. 
Worms ^^ spent three weeks at wholesome Wies- 

Heideiberg badcn, couuting a day that we gave to 
andstrasbure. Maycncc, on the other side of the Rhine, 



THE RHINE AND THE ALPS. 241 

for the purpose of seeing the memorials of Gutenberg, 
the inventor of printing. Then we took the train for 
Worms. The chief "hon" here is, of course, the mag- 
nificent Luther monument, a thing which no visitor to 
this part of the world should fail to see. Recrossing the 
Rhine, we ran up to Heidelberg, and devoted a day to 
the fine old castle and the famous university — a stinging 
cold day it was, too. Nor did winter relax his grip at 
Strasburg, for there we had snow. One of the youngsters 
celebrated his birthday there by watching the noon per- 
formances of the world-renowned clock in the old Cathe- 
dral, our whole party going with him, the adults watching 
the wonderful mechanism with scarcely less interest than 
the children. The striking of that clock and the move- 
ments of its various figures and fixtures at twelve o'clock 
every day invariably draws a large crowd of people. We 
saw the storks' nests on the chimneys, too, but of course 
the storks themselves were down in the warm sunshine 
of Africa at that season. 

November 23, 1902. 

Switzerland in Switzerland caps the climax of scenic in- 
winter-time. tcrcst in Europe — lakes, waterfalls, moun- 
tains, glaciers — language and pictures are alike unavail- 
ing to convey an adequate impression of this sublime 
scenery. My first views of it were in midsummer. On 
the 31st of July, 1896, at the top of the Wengern Alp, 
seven thousand feet above the sea, reached by rail all the 
way, my travelling companions and I had coasted on sleds 
over the snow like boys, wearing our heavy overcoats 
the while. Above us rose the Jungfrau, six thousand 
feet higher, piercing the clouds. As we watched, the 
clouds parted, and the white Jungfrau, wearing the daz- 
zling Silberhorn on her bosom, burst upon our view. 
Never shall we see anything more beautiful till our eyes 



242 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

rest upon the pinnacles of the celestial city. We were 
standing at the time on the Eiger Glacier, an immense 
mass of pale green ice covered with a snowy crust, Long- 
fellow somewhere (in "Hyperion," I think) likens the 
shape of one of the glaciers to a glove, lying with the 
palm downwards. "It is a gauntlet of ice, which centuries 
ago Winter, the king of these mountains, threw down 
in defiance to the Sun, and year by year the Sun strives 
in vain to lift it from the ground on the point of his 
glittering spear." Aye, in vain. Winter is king. But 
the Sun now and then wrenches somewhat from his grasp. 
And even while we gazed speechless at the unearthly 
splendor of the Jungfrau and the Silberhorn we heard 
an avalanche fall with a crash like the end of the world. 
That night we sat before a roaring fire and wrote home 
about it. 

That was my experience in midsummer. Now we 
were to see not only the great mountain tops, but the 
whole country, in the undisputed grasp of Winter. When 
we reached Lucerne, not only the high Alps, but all the 
mountains and hills, far as the eye could reach, were cov- 
ered with snow. When we visited Thorwaldsen's cele- 
brated Lion of Lucerne we found workmen with scaffold- 
ing and ladders against the cliff, carefully boxing it in 
with boards to prevent it from being injured by the freez- 
ing of water trickling down upon it during the winter 
now at hand. But we were in time, just in time, to see 
it, and we all agreed that few monuments in Europe are 
so impressive. The great figure, twenty-eight feet in 
length, I believe, carved in the living rock, represents the 
king of beasts lying slain, pierced by an arrow, with 
broken spear and shield beneath, and over that shield, 
which bears the lilies of France, the huge paws are 
thrown, as if guarding it still m death. It commemorates 



THE RHINE AND THE ALPS. 243 

the devotion of the Swiss guard who, in 1792, were ap- 
pointed to keep the palace at Versailles, and receiving no 
orders to retire, preferred to die at their post rather than 
betray their trust. The glacier gardens near by, with 
their ingenious and realistic illustration of the action of 
the falling water in grinding the boulders in the glacier 
pots, interested us greatly. We paid some attention to the 
shops also, and the old cathedral, and the quaint old 
bridges. But we did not tarry long at Lucerne. It was 
too cold. We took the steamer down the lake, though, 
cold as it was, for we had no idea of missing entirely 
the magnificent scenery which gives this body of water 
easy preeminence among the Swiss lakes. We spent the 
night, bitter cold, at Fluelen, then took the fastest train 
we could get for Milan, only to meet there another dis- 
appointment in the matter of the weather. 

November 26, 1902. 

We had seen the ice floating in great blocks 
us Little down the Neckar at Heidelberg, and had 
Relief. {gi|- ^j^e Stinging winds on the hills above 

the old castle ; we had stamped our feet on the stone floors 
of the cathedral at Strasburg to renew the circulation 
in our benumbed extremities while waiting for the crow- 
ing of the rooster and the marching of the puppets, and 
the striking of the bells on the famous clock ; we had 
seen vast fields of snow covering the Alps in every direc- 
tion as we passed through Switzerland, and had shivered 
in the searching cold as we steamed down Lake Lucerne, 
unable to tear ourselves from the glorious beauty that 
lay open to our view on every hand from the steamer's 
decks ; we had caught the wintry glitter of gigantic icicles 
against the cliffs on either side as our train climbed the 
wild St. Gothard pass — and, in short, we had had a 



244 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

surfeit of cold weather, and for days and weeks we had 
been sighing for Sunny Italy. Imagine our disappoint- 
ment, then, when we emerged from the Alps and entered 
the land of balmy climate and blue skies (as most of us 
had always ignorantly thought it to be even in winter) 
to find the whole world still white around us, to run along 
the side of Lake Lugano and Lake Como in a whirling 
snow-storm, and to arrive at Milan in a fog so thick that 
it looked like it could be cut into blocks, so opaque that at 
times we could not see the mighty Cathedral from our 
hotel, though but little more than a block away, and so 
persistent that it did not lift during the whole of our 
stay. Add to these conditions the slush in the streets and 
the penetrating quality of the damp, cold air, and our 
desire to push on at once to the farther south in search 
of more genial skies will not seem unnatural. And we 
might have done so, notwithstanding the attraction of the 
Cathedral and of Leonardo's picture of the "Last Supper" 
(which, however, we expected to see on our return to 
Northern Italy in the spring), had it not been for our 
anxiety to get a sight of the Iron Crown of Lombardy at 
Monza, a few miles north of Milan. And see it we did, 
in spite of the weather, as I shall tell you more fully 
in a later letter. We ate our Thanksgiving dinner at 
Milan, visited again and again the white marble Cathe- 
dral, whose delicate stone lace work was touched into 
marvellous and weird beauty by the snow clinging to its 
pinnacles and projections and statues, saw Leonardo's 
picture, and the other principal sights, and then took the 
train for Venice. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 
Venice, Bologna, Florence and Pisa. 

December 8, 1902. 

THOUGH still cool, the weather was milder in Venice, 
so we remained a week or so, yielding ourselves to 
the pensive charm of that — 

"White phantom city, whose untrodden streets 
Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting 
Shadows of palaces and strips of sky." 

Of the palaces that we visited, the one in which the poet 
Browning lived, and in which his son now lives, is the 
The Queen of bcst preserved, and illustrates better than 
the Adriatic, ^ny Other the almost regal state in which the 
wealthy Venetians lived in the day of their commercial 
supremacy. One of these old palaces on the Grand Canal 
is now used as a bank. Some are used as warehouses, 
and others are put to still meaner uses. The Doge's 
Palace is, of course, the largest and finest, but it is more 
like a public building than a residence. Next to this 
stands the chief architectural glory of Venice, the gor- 
geous Cathedral of St. Mark, with its unequalled pro- 
fusion of costly materials, and its ominously uneven stone 
floor, suggesting the painful possibility that it, too, may 
some day share the fate of the great Campanile, which 
till last summer lifted its head three hundred and seventy- 
five feet in the air from the pavement of the square in 
front. We found the ruins of this graceful structure, up 
the winding incline of which Napoleon Bonaparte is said 
to have ridden his horse to the belfry, lying in a heap 



246 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

on the square surrounded by a temporary unpainted board 
fence. Workmen within were making preparations for 
the erection of the new bell tower which is to take the 
place of the old one. On the first Sunday after our arrival 
we heard the Rev. Dr. Robertson, at the Presbyterian 
Church, make felicitous use of the fate of the old Cam- 
panile in a sermon on the text, "Other foundation can no 
man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." No- 
where are foundations of more importance than in Venice. 
The whole city is built upon piles. The Rialto Bridge, 
a great marble arch of a single span, rests upon twelve 
thousand of these piles, which are driven deep into the 
mud. 

The interior of the Church of the Jesuits made more 
impression upon us than any other Venetian church except 
St. Marks. It looks at first view like it was lined through- 
out with chintz, through which runs a green pattern ; but 
on closer inspection you find that it is all white marble — 
the pulpit and its heavy curtains, the altar steps, the walls 
from floor to ceiling, are all of white marble, and the 
green pattern is nothing less than verd antique. 

Some of our young people, who had already wearied 
of the miles of picture galleries in Europe, manifested 
but little interest in the rich collection of art at Venice, 
but I think that all brought away an indelible impression 
of Titian's splendid "Assumption of the Virgin." They 
felt a much keener interest in the marvellous skill of the 
Venetian glass-makers at Murano. But their special de- 
light was the gondolas. They soon had their favorites 
among the gondoliers, and, with Marco and Pedro pro- 
pelling them, threaded the innumerable canals in every 
direction, visited the outlying islands, drifted hither and 
thither on the broad lagoons, and enjoyed the distant 
views of this strangely beautiful city, sometimes looming 



VENICE, BOLOGNA, FLORENCE, PISA. 247 

through the mist, at other times standing out sharp and 
clear against the red sky of a flaming sunset. 
The Greatest of Nothing in all the strange history of Venice 
the Venetians, interested US SO mucli as the career of Fra 
Paolo Sarpi, "the greatest of the Venetians," as Dr. Alex- 
ander Robertson well calls him in his striking biography 
of that illustrious thinker and man of action. An eccle- 
siastic whom Gibbon calls "the incomparable historian of 
the Council of Trent" ; a mathematician of whom Galileo 
said, "No man in Europe surpasses Master Paolo Sar.pi 
in his knowledge of the science of mathematics" ; an 
anatomist whom Acquapendente, the famous surgeon of 
Padua, calls "the oracle of this century" ; a metaphysician 
who, as Lord Macaulay says, anticipated "Locke on the 
Human Understanding" ; and a statesman who saved 
Venice from the domination of the papacy — it is no won- 
der that Dr. Bedell, chaplain of the English Ambassador 
to Venice, should have said that he was "holden for a 
miracle in all manner of knowledge, divine and human." 
"As a statesman, the great Republic of Venice committed 
all its interests to his guidance, and he made its history, 
while he lived, an unbroken series of triumphs ; in an 
age when the papacy lifted high its head, and rode rough- 
shod over the rights of kings and peoples, he forced Pope 
Paul v., one of the haughtiest of Rome's Pontiffs, to his 
knees, and so shattered in his hands the Vv^eapon of inter- 
dict and excommunication that never again has it served 
the interest of a wearer of the tiara. Constitutional gov- 
ernment everywhere owes something to Fra Paolo ; and 
modern Italian history is the outcome and embodiment 
of the principles he laid down in his voluminous State 
papers. He was stronger than the papacy, for, in spite 
of the hatred, persecution and protest of Pope and Curia, 
he lived and died within the pale of the church, enjoying 



248 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

the esteem and affection of its clergy, performing all his 
priestly duties, and receiving, as the Senate wrote in its 
circular announcing his death to the courts of Europe, 
'Li santissimi sagramenti con ogni maggior pieta.' And 
he was stronger than the Republic, for immediately after 
his death it began to succumb to papal domination, and 
to totter to its fall." 

We visited the Servite Monastery, where he lived, the 
bridge where he was set upon and stabbed by the Pope's 
hired assassins, and where his statue now stands, and the 
grave in the island cemetery of Venice where his body 
rests at last after all the strange adventures and removals 
made necessary by the ghoulish malice of his foes. 

December lo, 1902. 
Bologna, The busiucss activity of Bologna is in sharp 

the Fat. contrast with the stagnation and decay of 
Venice. It is a brisk and handsome city, with well-paved 
streets, flanked by arcades like those along the Rue de 
Rivoli in Paris. Bologna has an unequalled number of 
these colonnades. They are so continuous, indeed, and 
afford such perfect protection from the sun in summer 
and the rain in winter, that it is more nearly possible to 
dispense with umbrellas here than in any other city in the 
world. The greatest of these covered ways is the portico 
which winds up the mountain just outside the city, by 
an easy gradation, to the costly church of the Madonna 
di S. Lucca, which, as its name indicates, possesses an 
image of the Virgin said to have been the work of Saint 
Luke. There are no fewer than six hundred and thirty- 
five arches in this colonnade, and they command lovely 
views on either side, as one ascends ; but the view from 
the church, at the top of the mountain, caps the climax, 
combining, as it does, Alps, Appennines, Adriatic, plains 



VENICE, BOLOGNA, FLORENCE, PISA. 249 

and cities. It is from the arches of this long colonnade 
up the mountain that one gets the best impression of 
Bologna's towers. They are very numerous, and many 
of them are out of the perpendicular. In fact, there are 
more leaning towers here than in any other city in the 
world. But, unlike "Pisa's leaning miracle," these are 
not beautiful. They are imposing only in the grouping 
of a distant view, being nothing but quadrangular masses 
of ugly brown brick, with no ornaments, no windows, 
and indeed no known uses, the object for which they were 
erected being now an insoluble mystery. 

Bologna has important manufactures of silk goods, 
velvet, crape, chemicals, paper, musical instruments, soap 
and sausages. We made full trial of the last two men- 
tioned commodities, and found them excellent. But Bo- 
logna, while vital and modern, is not lacking in the matter 
of antiquity and literary and historical interest. It boasts 
the oldest university in the world, founded in 425 A. D. 
In the thirteenth century it had ten thousand students, 
and it still has over a thousand. In front of the Univer- 
sity stands a statue of Galvani, holditig a tablet on which 
he is exhibiting the famous frog legs. But it is said that 
"his wife was the real discoverer of galvanism, having 
laid some frogs, which she was preparing for soup, beside 
a charged electrical machine ; and it was she who ob- 
served the convulsion in the frogs which she touched with 
the scalpel, and communicated the discovery to her hus- 
band, who repeated the experiment at the University." 

December 15, 1902, 

The Flower of Florence ! "City of fair flowers, and flower 

Fair Cities, of fair citics !" Second only to Rome itself 

in variety and wealth of historical, artistic and literary 

interest, home of Dante and Boccacio, Machiavelli and 

17 



250 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

the Medici, Galileo and Amerigo Vespucci, Savonarola 
and Fra Angelico, Cimabue, Giotto, Brunelleschi, Ghi- 
berti, Donatello, Michelangelo and Benvenuto Cellini — 
what can one do in a letter like this but merely name them 
and pass on, hoping for a time of larger leisure to say at 
least a word concerning the most illustrious of them? 

In the Uffizi Gallery, which is "a complete exempli- 
fication of the progress and development of art," there 
is an octagonal room, called the Tribune, which contains 
perhaps the richest aggregation of masterpieces in the 
world. Sculpture is represented by the Venus de Medici, 
the Young Apollo, The Wrestlers, The Grinder, and The 
Dancing Faun ; and painting by no less remarkable pic- 
tures. In addition to these, the things that stand out in 
one's memory -in connection with Florence are Cellini's 
"Perseus," Ghiberti's "Doors," Michael Angelo's "David" 
and his "Lorenzo de Medici," Brunelleschi's "Dome," and 
last, but not least, Giotto's "Tower," "the model and 
mirror of perfect architecture," of which John Ruskin 
says: "The characteristics of Power and Beauty occur 
more or less in diflferent buildings — some in one and 
some in another. But all together, all in their highest 
possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as I know, 
only in one building in the world — the Campanile of 
Giotto at Florence." For the proper appreciation of- 
almost any other great production of art some education 
in art is necessary, but any one can see the transcendant 
beauty of Giotto's "Tower." Untutored as we are in 
these matters, we never wearied of looking at it. 

In the freshness of its undimmed splendor, there is 
nothing in Florence to compare with the Medici Chapel. 
It is still unfinished, but has cost up to the present time 
three million five hundred thousand dollars. It is probably 
the most magnificent mausoleum in the world. "The walls 



VENICE, BOLOGNA, FLORENCE, PISA. 251 

are covered with costly marbles, inlaid with precious 
stones — a gorgeous mosaic of the richest material." 

The Reformer ■^^^' ^^^^^ ^^^> ^^^ thing that layS dccpCSt 

before the hold of US in Florence is the story of Savon- 
Reformation. ^^.^j^^ Harbinger of the Reformation and 
Martyr for the Truth. That little cell in the Monastery 
of San Marco, where he once lived, and where his manu- 
script sermons, his annotated books and his wooden cru- 
cifix are still shown; those fearful dungeons in the 
Palazzo Vecchio, where the greatest man of his age en- 
dured his forty days' imprisonment, and lay during the 
intervals of torture, and spent his last hours on earth; 
and the bustling Piazza Delia Signoria, which witnessed 
the triumphant tragedy of May 23, 1498 — Florence has 
nothing else so impressive as these. We visit them with 
subdued hearts and reverent spirits. "On the 22nd of 
May, 1498, it was announced to Savonarola and his 
friends, Domenico and Marufifi, that they were to be 
executed by five the next morning; our heroic preacher 
was thoroughly resigned to his share of the doom, saying 
to Domenico, 'Knowest thou not it is not permitted to a 
man to choose the mode of his own death?' The three 
friends partook of the sacrament of the Holy Supper, 
administered by Savonarola. He said, 'We shall soon 
be there, where we can sing with David, "Behold how 
good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together 
in unity !" ' They were then taken to the tribunal, where 
they were divested of all their priestly decorations, during 
which the bishop took Savonarola by the hand, saying, 
'Thus I exclude thee from the church militant and tri- 
umphant.' 'From the church militant thou mayest,' ex- 
claimed Savonarola, 'but from the church triumphant 
thou canst not; that does not belong to thee.' . . . 
The last that was beheld of him was his hand uplifted 



2S2 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

as if to bless the people; the last that was heard of him, 
'My Saviour, though innocent, willingly died for my sins, 
and should I not willingly give up this poor body out of 
love to him?' The cinders of the bodies of the martyred 
friars were carted away, and thrown into the river Arno." 
But — 

"The Avon to the Severn runs, 

The Severn to the sea; 
And Wycliflfe's dust shall spread abroad, 

Wide as the waters be." 

What the principles of Wycliffe have done for England, 
the principles of Savonarola may yet do for Italy. At 
any rate, his work for Italy is not done yet. 

December 19, 1902. 
Pita's Four The four chief objects of interest at Pisa 

Monuments, are all in a group at the northern end of 
the town, and a wonderfully effective group it is : the 
cloistered cemetery, or Camp Santo, with its fifty-five 
ship-loads of earth from the Holy Land; the Baptistery, 
with its remarkable echo ; the Cathedral, with the pendent 
lamp in the nave which suggested to Galileo the idea of 
the pendulum ; and that wonder of the world, the white 
marble Tower, which leans thirteen feet out of the per- 
pendicular. We all tried in vain to stand with heels and 
back to the inside of the north wall on the ground floor — 
it cannot be done; one falls forward at once. From the 
top there is a magnificent view of the city and the sur- 
rounding plain, of the mountains on the east and the 
sea on the west, of the city of Leghorn and the island 
of Elba. 

From the windows of our hotel at Pisa we saw for 
the first time the red gold of ripe oranges shining amid 
their dark green leaves in the gardens, and rejoiced to 



VENICE, BOLOGNA, FLORENCE, PISA. 253 

think that at last we had reached a somewhat milder 
climate, and were now leaving rigorous winter behind us. 
The journey from Pisa to Rome is a long one, and the 
schedule was such that we did not arrive till late at night. 
From the car windows we had some impressive views 
of the Mediterranean by moonlight, and of the solemn 
campagna, and, thus prepared, we crossed the Tiber at 
midnight, and passed through the breach in the walls 
which has been made for the railway, feeling, perhaps 
even more deeply than is usual, the thrill with which all 
travellers except those who are utterly devoid of imagina- 
tion first enter the Eternal City. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 
Some Little Adventures by the Way. 

December 21, 1902. 

THE margin of leisure left to a traveller in Europe 
for the writing of letters is, after all, a very narrow 
one, as those of my readers who have been abroad will 
readily remember. One generally moves from place to 
place in such rapid succession that the feel- 
unfavo" able to ^"g of being Settled, which is essential to 
Letter-writinff the most Satisfactory writing, is almost un- 
known. Then, when one does stop for a 
few days in a historic city, each day is so full of interest, 
and the golden opportunity to see its sights seems so fleet- 
ing, that one hesitates to take any part of such time for 
writing, to say nothing of the weariness and drowsiness 
of an evening that follows a day of sight-seeing. 

Add to this the amount of time required of one who 
acts as general director of the tour, and has to take ac- 
count of all manner of business details, and the number 
of questions to be answered when there are three or four 
young people in the party who have read just enough 
general history to make their minds bristle with interroga- 
tions at every interesting place, and who have to be read 
to daily en masse on the spot in order to improve the 
psychological moment of excited curiosity ; add also the 
physician's injunction to take abundance of exercise in 
the open air, in order to the full recovery of health and 
the laying up of strength for future work, and his earnest 
counsel not to linger much at a writings desk or a study 



SOME LITTLE ADVENTURES. 255 

table — and it will be seen that if the continuity of this 
series of letters suffers an occasional break, it is but the 
natural result of the conditions of tourist life. 

It may interest some of my younger readers 

An American ■' j j o 

Baby in to know that the member of our party who 

Europe. reccives the most attention is a little blue- 

eyed girl, just two years old to-day, who is the most 
extraordinary traveller of her age that I ever saw or 
ever heard of, accepting all the irregularities, inconveni- 
ences and discomforts of this migratory mode of life with 
the serene indifference of a veteran. We naturally sup- 
posed that, being so young, she would give us more or 
less trouble on so long a journey, and this proved to be 
true on the cold and rough sea voyage, but, from the 
day that we landed on this side of the ocean, she has been 
a delight to our whole party, a maker of friends wherever 
we have gone, and an immensely interesting object to the 
populace of the cities through which we have passed. At 
Leyden, in Holland, as we passed along the streets, we 
were followed all over town by an admiring throng of 
Dutch children, just out of school, to whom our baby's 
bright red coat and cap were no less interesting than their 
wooden shoes were to us; and so we found out how the 
elephants and monkeys and musicians and other people 
who make up the street parade of a circus may be sup- 
posed to feel when they pass through a town followed 
by the motley gang of school boys, ragamuffins, and gen- 
eral miscellanies of humanity. 

At Wiesbaden, in Germany, we bought one 

Something 

New in of thosc odd little German baby carts with 

Venice. j.^^ whecls and two handles, like plow 

handles, between which the person who pushes it walks, 

the baby really riding backwards, instead of forwards, as 

in our American baby carriages. You will see from this 



256 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

description that German baby carriages are like the Ger- 
man language — all turned the wrong way, though it must 
be said for this arrangement that the baby is not so likely 
to be lonesome as when riding face forward, since she 
always has some one to look at. Well, at Venice, which 
is almost a dead town now, so far as business is con- 
cerned, and which has perhaps as large a leisure class — 
that is, street loafers — as any city of equal size on this 
terraqueous planet, a lady of our party essayed to take 
the baby out for an airing in her German cart. It would 
appear that it was the first time since the foundation of 
that pile-driven city in the sea that a pair of wheels was 
ever seen on her streets. At any rate, from the moment 
that the lady and the baby and the cart emerged from 
the hotel door they were attended by an ever-increasing 
throng of unwashed Venetians, whose interest could not 
have been keener had Santos Dumont's air-ship or a Japa- 
nese jinriksha suddenly appeared in their gondola-ridden 
town, and who commented in shrill Italian on this wheeled 
apparition. The lady is not easily beaten when she decides 
to do anything, but, after standing that for half a block 
or so, she made a hasty retreat to the hotel, and wheels 
disappeared, probably forever, from the streets of Venice. 
Gondolas and Although Venice, with its population of 
Gondoliers, one hundred and sixty-three thousand, is 
seven miles in circumference, and is divided by one hun- 
dred and forty-six canals into one hundred and seventeen 
islands, yet these are so joined together by means of four 
hundred bridges that it is possible to walk all over the 
city. But the bridges are built in steps, and cannot be 
used by wheeled vehicles. There are no horses or car- 
riages of any kind. The funereal-looking gondola, always 
painted black, is the only conveyance upon these streets 
of water, and does duty for cab, omnibus, wagon, cart, 



SOME LITTLE ADVENTURES. 257 

wheelbarrow and hearse. It is used for pleasure riding, 
shopping, church-going, theatre-going, visiting, carrying 
prisoners to jail, carrying the dead to the cemetery — in 
short, for everything. 

In propelling this black but graceful and easy-going 
boat, the gondolier does not sit. He stands, on a sort 
of deck platform towards the stern, and to balance his 
weight there is affixed to the prow a heavy piece of shin- 
ing steel, which rears itself at the front almost like a 
figure-head, only this is always of the same pattern, sim- 
ply a broad, upright blade of steel, notched deeply on the 
front edge. The gondolier does not pull the oar, he pushes 
it — there is only one oar — and he does not change it 
from side to side, as in paddling a canoe, but makes all 
the strokes on one side, a thing that looks very easy, but 
is in fact extremely difficult. The dexterity of these men 
with their long single oar is wonderful. They glide in 
and out among scores of gondolas on the crowded canals 
without collision or jerking, and they turn a corner within 
an inch. 

Baggage Smash- Thcsc remarks upon the skill of the gondo- 
ing in Europe, ijers, and the ease and safety of the gon- 
dolas, remind me, by contrast, of the destructive bungling 
of a porter in Cologne, who undertook to cart a load of 
trunks and handbags and shawl-straps down from our 
hotel to the Rhine steamer, and who, in turning a corner 
on a down grade, made the turn too short, and hurled 
the whole lot of our belongings into the muddy street 
with such violence that many of them were defaced, some 
permanently damaged, and one valise broken to pieces 
and utterly ruined. 

That German baby carriage had an exciting adventure 
also on the night of our arrival in Rome. As usual, it 
was made the apex of the pyramid of trunks and grip- 



258 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

sacks which constitute our sign manual, so to speak, on 
the top of every omnibus that takes us from the station 
to the hotel; but in this instance it was carelessly left 
untied, so that as we went steeply down one of the seven 
hills of Rome, the cart tumbled from its high perch to the 
stone-paved street, snapping off one of the handles, and 
suffering sundry other shattering experiences. A few 
days after we had the pleasure of paying a fraudulent 
cabinetmaker more for repairing it than it cost in the first 
instance. The Italian workmen and shopkeepers uni- 
formly charge you more than their work and goods are 
worth. I think I have had more counterfeit money passed 
on me in the short time I have been in Italy than I have 
had in all the rest of my life before, and the very first 
swindle of this kind to which I was subjected was in a 
church, when the sacristan gave me a counterfeit two- 
franc piece in change as I paid the admission fees to see 
certain paintings and sculptures behind the high altar. 

However, I am wandering from my subject; I may 
conclude my eulogy on the baby above mentioned by say- 
ing that, young as she is, she sits through the seventy or 
eighty minutes of the customary tedious European dinner 
almost as circumspectly as a graven image might, but 
reminding us of one of Raphael's cherubs in her blue- 
eyed combination of sweetness, archness and dignity. 

Next time we will resume our account of matters of 
more general interest. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

Relics in General, and the Iron Crown of Lombardy 
IN Particular. 

Rome, December 23, 1902. 

I HAD heard of relics before. Years ago I had read 
Mark Twain's account of the large piece of the true 
cross which he had seen in a church in the Azores; and 
of another piece which he had seen in the Cathedral of 
Notre Dame in Paris, besides some nails of the true cross 
and a part of the crown of thorns ; and of the marble 
chest in the Cathedral of San Lorenzo at Genoa, which 
he was told contained the ashes of St. John, and was 
wound about with the chain that had confined St. John 
when he was in prison ; and of the interesting collection 
shown him in the Cathedral of Milan, including two of 
St. Paul's fingers and one of St. Peter's, a bone of Judas 
Iscariot (black, not white), and also bones of all the other 
disciples (presumably of the normal color), a handker- 
chief in which the Saviour had left the impression of his 
face, part of the crown of thorns, a fragment of the purple 
robe worn by Christ, a picture of the Virgin and Child 
painted by St. Luke, and a nail from the cross — adding 
in another place that he thought he had seen in all not 
less than a keg of these nails. 

But I had hardly taken Mark Twain seriously in these 
statements, not knowing at the time that his Innocents 
Abroad was, notwithstanding its broad humor, really 
one of the best guide-books to Europe that was ever 
written. 



26o A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

The Palladium I had read repeatedly the story of the bring- 
of Venice. ing of St. Mark's bones from Alexandria, 
in Egypt, to their present resting-place in St. Mark's 
Cathedral at Venice — a story which is related as follows 
in that same lively volume: 

"St. Mark died at Alexandria, in Egypt. He was 
martyred, I think. However, that has nothing to do with 
my legend. About the founding of the city of Venice — 
say four hundred and fifty years after Christ — (for 
Venice is much younger than any other Italian city), a 
priest dreamed that an angel told him that until the re- 
mains of St. Mark were brought to Venice, the city could 
never rise to high distinction among the nations ; that 
the body must be captured, brought to the city, and a 
magnificent church built over it; and that if ever the 
Venetians allowed the Saint to be removed from his new 
resting-place, in that day Venice would perish from off 
the face of the earth. The priest proclaimed his dream, 
and forthwith Venice set about procuring the corpse of 
St. Mark. One expedition after another tried and failed, 
but the project was never abandoned during four hundred 
years. At last it was secured by stratagem, in the year 
eight hundred and something. The commander of the 
Venetian expedition disguised himself, stole the bones, 
separated them, and packed them in vessels filled with 
lard. The religion of Mahomet causes its devotees to 
abhor anything in the nature of pork, and so when the 
Christian was stopped at the gate of the city, they only 
glanced once into the precious baskets, then turned up 
their noses at the unholy lard, and let him go. The bones 
were buried in the vaults of the grand cathedral, which 
had been waiting long years to receive them, and thus the 
safety and the greatness of Venice were secured. And 
to this day there be those in Venice who believe that if 



RELICS IN GENERAL. 261 

those holy ashes were stolen away, the ancient city would 
vanish like a dream, and its foundation be buried forever 
in the unremembering sea." 

More recently I had read of what has been 

The Gift of •' 

Leo XIII. well called the burlesque enacted at Arundel 

to London. Castle no longer ago than in July, 1902, in 

which the Duke of Norfolk, Cardinal Vaughan, and many 

lesser ornaments and dignitaries of the Romish Church, 

took part. 

"Pope Leo XIII., in order to show his 'good-will to 
England,' sent from Rome the remains of St. Edmund 
to garnish the new Roman Catholic cathedral at West- 
minster. It was an appropriate gift, for such buildings 
are usually garnished with 'dead men's bones and all un- 
cleanness.' But as the cathedral is not yet finished, as a 
further token of good-will, the relics were committed to 
the care of no less a personage than the Earl Marshal of 
England. They arrived at Arundel on the evening of 
July 25th, and were placed for the night in Fitzalen 
Chapel. The next morning the whole castle was astir 
betimes, for the great event of the day, the transference 
of the bones to the castle chapel, was to take place. This 
was accomplished in a solemn and befitting manner. A 
procession was formed, and, to the measured tread of 
the Earl Marshal of England, Cardinal Vaughan, several 
archbishops and bishops, and a mixed company of priests 
and acolytes and a numerous train of household servants 
and dependents, carrying banners, crosses, crucifixes, 
censers, lamps, candles, torches, and other ecclesiastical 
stage paraphernalia, the remains of St. Edmund were 
borne to their resting-place. All went ofif well, and at 
last the curtain fell on the finished play, to the satisfaction 
of every one. Unfortunately, however, the Pope and all 
concerned had to reckon with English common-sense and 



262 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

with English love of truth, and it was not very long before 
it was proved to the world that the bones, like most relics 
of the kind, were counterfeit — whoever else's bones they 
were, they were not those of St. Edmund." ^ 
The Blood of I had read with cordial approval Mark 
st.januarius. Twain's animadvcrsions upon the fraud 
which is regularly practiced on the people of Naples by 
the priests in the Cathedral : 

"In this city of Naples they believe in and support 
one of the wretchedest of all religious impostures one can 
find in Italy — the miraculous liquefaction of the blood 
of St. Januarius. Twice a year the priests assemble all 
the people at the Cathedral, and get out this phial of 
clotted blood, and let them see it slowly dissolve and 
become liquid ; and every day for eight days this dismal 
farce is repeated, while the priests go among the crowd 
and collect money for the exhibition. The first day the 
blood liquefies in forty-seven minutes — the church is full 
then, and time must be allowed the collectors to get 
around; after a while it liquefies a little quicker and a 
little quicker every day, as the houses grow smaller, till 
on the eig'hth day, with only a few dozen present to see 
the miracle, it liquefies in four minutes.^ 

"And here, also, they used to have a grand procession 

^ The Roman Catholic Church in Italy, Alexander Robertson, 
pp. 203, 204. 

' In July of this year, 1903, while the Roman Catholic world 
was greatly exercised over the grave illness of the late Pope, 
Leo XIII., the Associated Press dispatches from Naples reported 
that the blood of St. Januarius had miraculously liquefied at that 
unusual time in token that the prayers offered for the Pope's 
recovery had been answered. The Archbishop of Naples has up 
to the present time vouchsafed no explanation of the fact that 
the Pope died a few days later, notwithstanding this miraculous 
assurance that he would recover. 



RELICS IN GENERAL. 263 

of priests, citizens, soldiers, sailors, and the high digni- 
taries of the city government, once a year, to shave the 
head of a made-up Madonna — a stuffed and painted 
image, like the milliner's dummy — whose hair miracu- 
lously grew and restored itself every twelve months. 
They still kept up this shaving procession as late as four 
or five years ago. It was a source of great profit to the 
church that possessed the remarkable efiigy, and the 
public barbering of her was always carried out with the 
greatest eclat and display — the more the better, because 
the more excitement there was about it the larger the 
crowds it drew and the heavier the revenues it produced — 
but at last the day came when the Pope and his servants 
were unpopular in Naples, and the city government 
stopped the Madonna's annual show. 

"There we have two specimens of these Neapolitans — 
two of the silliest possible frauds, which half the popula- 
tion religiously and faithfully believed, and the other half 
either believed or else said nothing about, and thus lent 
themselves to the support of the imposture." 

I had read the story of the Casa Santa, or 

The House of •' 

the Virgin Holy House, the little stone buildmg, thir- 
at Loretto. <^^^^ ^^^ one-half feet high and twenty-eight 
feet long, in which the Virgin Mary had lived at Nazareth. 
In 336 the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the 
Great, made a pilgrimage to Nazareth and built a church 
over the Holy House. This church fell into decay when 
the Saracens again got the upper hand in Palestine, and 
when the Christians lost Ptolemais the Holy House was 
carried by angels through the air from Nazareth to the 
coast of Dalmatia. This miraculous transportation took 
place in 1 29 1. A few years later it was again removed 
by angels during the night, and set down in the Province 
of Ancona, near the eastern coast of Italy, on the ground 



264 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

of a widow named Laureta. Hence the name, Loretto, 
given to the town which sprang up around it for the 
accommodation of the thousands of pilgrims who flocked 
thither, and which is now a place of some six thousand 
inhabitants, whose principal business is begging and the 
sale of rosaries, medals and images. In a niche inside 
the Casa Santa is a small black image of the Virgin and 
Child, of cedar, attributed, of course, to St. Luke. We 
did not visit Loretto, but at Bologna we had the satisfac- 
tion of seeing a facsimile of the Casa Santa, with its little 
window and fireplace, and the replica of St. Luke's handi- 
work in the niche above. A large number of women, some 
of them handsomely dressed, were saying their prayers 
and counting their beads before the altar that had been 
erected in front of these images and the Holy House, and 
a few were kneeling in the narrow space behind the altar, 
close to the fireplace of the house. As we passed, one 
of these women, in plainer garb, interrupted her devotions 
long enough to hold out her hand to us, begging for 
pennies, but without rising from her knees. There was 
nothing unusual about this, except that this beggar made 
her appeal to us while actually on her knees to the image 
of the Virgin, for nothing is more common in Italy than 
for visitors to a Roman Catholic church to pass through 
such "an avenue of palms" when leaving it. 

I had even seen a few relics, not mere repro- 
The Wonder- (juctions like that of the Casa Santa at Bo- 

working Bones 

of St. Anne logua, but the relics themselves. For in- 
in ana a. stance, three summers ago, when in Quebec, 
I had made a special trip to the Church of St. Anne 
Beaupre, some twenty miles below the city, for the pur- 
pose of seeing the wonder-working relics of St. Anne, 
the alleged mother of the Virgin Mary — a bit of her 
finger bone and a bit of her wrist bone — which are de- 



THE IRON CROWN. 265 

voutly kissed and adored by thousands of pilgrims to this 
magnificent church from all the French and Irish portions 
of Canada, and which are said to have wrought miraculous 
cures of all manner of maladies, cures which are attested 
by two immense stacks of canes, crutches, wooden legs, 
and the like, which rise from the floor almost to the roof 
on either side of the entrance. In the store in another 
part of the church I had got a clue to it all by seeing the 
poor pilgrims buying all sorts of cheap, tawdry, worthless 
little images and pictures, and especially little vials of 
oil of remarkable curative virtue because it had stood for 
a while before the image of St. Anne, and for which they 
paid probably five times as much as the oil had cost the 
priests who were selling it. 

The Iron Crown These, then, are potent bones and images 
of Lombardy. ^nd oils, but by far the most interesting relic 
I had seen before reaching Rome itself was the Iron 
Crown of Lombardy, at Monza, a little town in Northern 
Italy. This is the place where the good King Humbert 
was assassinated on the 29th of July, 1900, and it is not 
without interest for other reasons. For instance, it has 
a cathedral built of black and white marble in horizontal 
stripes, and containing, besides the tomb of Queen The- 
odolinda and other interesting objects in the nave and its 
chapels, a great number of costly articles of gold and 
silver, set with precious stones, in the treasury, as well 
as various relics, such as some of the baskets carried by 
the apostles, a piece of the Virgin Mary's veil, and one 
of John the Baptist's teeth. But we should never have 
made a special trip to Monza in such weather as we were 
having at the time of our visit, last November, had it not 
been for our intense desire to see its chief treasure, the 
Iron Crown, the most sacred and most celebrated diadem 
in the world, a relic possessing real historical interest, 
18 



266 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

not because of any probability whatever in the story of 
its origin, but because of the extraordinary uses and asso- 
ciations of it within the last thousand years. 
A Winter Trip So, regardlcss of the wet, cold, foggy 

toMonza. weather that we found in Milan, and the 
rivers of mud and slush that were then doing duty for 
streets, and the splotches of snow that lay here and there 
in the forlorn-looking olive orchards, we took the electric 
tram, which was comfortably heated, and ran out to 
Monza, a distance of some ten miles. When we stepped 
into the chilly cathedral and looked about us, we could 
not at first see anybody to show us around, though there 
were a good many poor people saying their prayers there. 
Evidently the custodians were not expecting tourists at 
such a season and in such weather. But presently, in an 
apartment to the left, we found a number of the priests 
warming their hands over a dish of twig coals covered 
with a light layer of white ashes, which they kindly stirred 
a little to make them give forth more heat as they saw 
us stretch our cold hands also towards the grateful 
warmth. 
The Treasury of When wc askcd if wc could sce the Iron 

the Cathedral. Crowu, they said we could; but instead of 
going at once to the chapel in which it is kept, they got 
a great bag of keys, large keys, thirty-seven in number, 
as the observant statistician of our party ascertained, and 
led us into the treasury and unlocked a great number of 
doors (one of which had seven locks), and showed us 
the costly objects and precious relics above mentioned. 
We were only mildly interested in these — even in the 
apostolic baskets, the Virgin's veil, and John the Baptist's 
tooth — partly because we were so cold and partly because 
of our greater interest in the more famous relic which we 
had come especially to see. 



THE IRON CROWN. 267 

The Chapel of At last onc of the priests, attended by an 
the Great Relic, acolyte, took Up a censcr, placed a little 
incense on the coals with a teaspoon, and, swinging it in 
his hand by the chain, led us back into the cathedral, 
turned to a chapel on the left, unlocked an iron gate in a 
tall railing which separated this chapel from the body of 
the building, closed the gate again when our party had 
come inside, and, while a dozen or so of the people who 
had been at their devotions crowded up to the railing and 
peered curiously through, he and his attendant began to 
kneel repeatedly before the altar and to swing the smoking 
censer on every side. Above the altar was a strong, 
square steel box, over which, in plain view, was suspended 
a facsimile of the Iron Crown, made of cheaper mate- 
rials, while the real crown was still concealed within the 
steel safe. 

The Great Relic Handing the censer to his attendant, that it 
Itself. might be kept swinging without intermis- 
sion, the priest produced another series of keys and pro- 
ceeded to unlock a succession of small doors in the side 
of the metal safe, which proved to be a "nest" of caskets, 
one within another, the last of which was a glass case. 
Drawing this out, he brought into full view the venerated 
crown of the Lombard kings, and told us to step up on 
the stool by the altar so as to see it better. It is made 
of six plates of gold, joined end to end, richly chased, 
and set with splendid jewels. But one would see at a 
glance that neither the material, nor the workmanship, 
nor the gems, could account for the unique reverence 
with which it has been regarded for centuries, and an 
indication of which we had just seen in the service con- 
ducted by the priest. Among the regalia in the Tower 
of London, and at several other places in Europe, we had 
seen crowns which far surpassed this one in costliness 



268 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

and beauty, but none of which, nor all of which combined, 
had ever excited a thousandth part of the interest attach- 
ing to this old crown in Monza. 

Why the Crown The explanation is this: within that ring 
is so Sacred. Qf jointed plates of gold runs a thin band of 
iron, which priestly tradition says was made of one of the 
spikes that fastened the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ 
to the cross. It was this band of iron that we tiptoed 
to see, hardly noticing the bejewelled rim of gold around 
it. It was on account of this band of iron that the priest 
and his attendant swung their censer and performed their 
ceremony as we entered. It was this band of iron that 
gave to the crown its sacred place above the altar. It 
was for the safe keeping of this band of iron that the 
steel case, with its numerous locks, was made. It was 
from this band of iron that the diadem received its name, 
the Iron Crown of Lombardy. 

And what were the historical uses of it, re- 
used b^^char- ferred to above, which made it so much 
lemagneand morc interesting to us than the many other 
so-called nails of the true cross elsewhere? 
Well, this among others: on the last Christmas day of 
the eighth century, while Charlemagne was kneeling with 
uncovered he'ad before the high altar of St. Peter's in 
Rome, the Pope approached him from behind, and, 
placing the Iron Crown of Lombardy on his head, hailed 
him as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. 

A thousand years later on the 26th of May, 1805, 
Napoleon Bonaparte, "watched by an apparently invinci- 
ble army which adored him and a world which feared 
him," standing in the vast marble cathedral at Milan, 
with fifteen thousand of his soldiers around him, lifted 
this same Iron Crown of Lombardy into their view, and 



RELICS IN GENERAL. 269 

placed it upon his brow, saying, "God has given it to me, 

let him touch it who dares!" 

„. . „ „ . That men who, like Charlemagne and Nape- 
High Reflections ' . ° . ^ 

and Hard Icou, had reached the highest pinnacle of 
Cash. human power, should seek to enhance their 

influence by crowning their heads with one of the nails 
which, as their followers believed, had pierced the Gali- 
lean's foot, is a richly suggestive fact. But we must keep 
our tempted thoughts to another and less edifying line at 
present. 

When we had examined all the parts of the famous 
crown to our satisfaction, we stepped to the desk in the 
ante-room and paid our five francs (one dollar), the regu- 
lar price for the exhibition of the Iron Crown, then left 
the cathedral, bought one or two post-card pictures of 
the crown, and took the tram through the dreary weather 
back to Milan, well pleased with the results of our first 
pilgrimage to the shrine of a real Roman Catholic relic 
in Italy. 

Rome Caps But ou our arrival at Rome, a month later, 

the Climax, ^g f ouud that, interesting as were the relics 
which we had seen or read of elsewhere, they were no- 
thing to those in the Eternal City itself. In this, as in 
everything else except such little matters as cleanliness 
and morality and truthfulness and honesty, Rome outvies 
all her rivals. It is only fair to add, however, that, since 
the overthrow of the papal sovereignty and the establish- 
ment of a capable government, Rome has improved im- 
mensely in the matter of cleanliness, and even her 
immorality is not so flaunting as it was. This is attested 
by the Hon, Guiseppe Zanardelli, the present Premier of 
Italy, who says: 

"The church appears better than it once was. I no 
longer see in Rome what I used often to see in my young 



270 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

days, ladies driving about its streets with their coachmen 
and footmen in the liveries of their respective cardinals. 
Has this improvement come about because the church is 
really growing better? Nothing of the kind. It is be- 
cause the strong arm of the law checks the villainy of 
the priests." That is the testimony of the Prime Minister 
of Italy. 



A few weeks after my return from Italy, 
Do American while driving one afternoon with a friend 

Roman *=* 

Catholics of mine, a lawyer of high intelligence and 
^^*^*^^?.'°, wide information, our conversation turned 

the Rehcs ? ' 

to the subject of the recent death of Pope 
Leo XIII., and from that drifted to the alleged liquefac- 
tion of the blood of St. Januarius, and from that to relics 
in general. I mentioned some of the facts above stated 
concerning the numerous pieces of the true cross and the 
miracle-working bones and oils to be seen in Roman 
Catholic churches in Europe. "But," he said, "surely 
the Roman Catholics in America do not believe in such 
mediaeval superstitions." I happened to have in hand a 
couple of copies of a daily newspaper, published in one 
of our Southern towns, dated August 9, 1903, and August 
17, 1903, respectively, containing extracts from the letters 
of a Roman Catholic bishop, the highest dignitary of 
his church in that State; and, for answer to my friend's 
remark, I cited the following passage from the bishop's 
letter of July loth, written from Munich, concerning the 
abbey church of Scheyern : 

"The chapel of the Holy Cross is specially sacred, as 
within is preserved a very large piece of the true cross 
upon which Christ was crucified, brought to Scheyern 
in 1 1 56 by Count Conrad, the Crusader, who afterwards 



RELICS IN GENERAL. 271 

entered the monastery as lay-brother, and lies buried near 
the altar upon which the sacred relic is preserved." 

Also the following passage from his letter of July 
I2th, written from Eichstadt: 

"I remained the guest of Prince Ahrenberg for the 
night, and early in the morning, accompanied by some 
Benedictine students, I made a pilgrimage to the shrine 
of St. Walburg. Above the altar is the large silver recep- 
tacle into which flows the miraculous oil from her sacred 
relics, which is known the world over." 

Writing from Vienna, July 20, IQ03, con- 

What America . ° . . ' J J > :^ 0» 

Needs is ccming the imperial palaces, he says, ' They 

Some Relics. ^^^ awfuUy big and grand, and cost a lot 

of good people's money," but adds that "the pride and 

glory of Vienna" is the Cathedral, and then exclaims: 

"How often have I wished we could have some such 

church in , so that our good people who cannot 

visit the achievements of Catholic life in Europe could 
form some idea of the greatness of the religion of their 
fathers !" 

One hesitates to differ ^^rom so good an authority on 
such matters as this bishop, but really would he not 
agree, on reflection, that what this benighted and decaying 
country of ours needs to bring it up to a level with Italy 
and Austria and Spain is not a big church, but some 
relics? Would not some miraculous oil, or some wonder- 
working bones, or a piece of the true cross, or one of the 
nails, if placed on exhibition here attract far more at- 
tention than a big church, and enable "our good people 
who cannot visit the achievements of Catholic life in 
Europe" to form a much better "idea of the greatness 
of the religion of their fathers"? Does it not seem 
strange that so many hundreds of these relics should be 
kept in those enlightened and happy countries like Italy, 



272 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

where "the achievements of Catholic life" are so well 
known, and where Mother Church has for centuries had 
full sway, and that none of them should be brought to 
these benighted Protestant regions, where they could 
effect such a salutary change in the faith of the people? 
But, seriously, as I added to my friend in the conversa- 
tion referred to, I have a better opinion of the intelligence 
of our good Roman Catholic people in America than to 
believe that they put the slightest credence in these child- 
ish superstitions. Whatever the bishop above quoted may 
believe, I am confident that the intelligent Roman Catholic 
people of our country have no more faith in many of 
these alleged relics than we have. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

Roman Catholic Relics at Rome. 

TXT'E reached Rome at a good time for seeing relics, 
* ' as the special services of the Christmas sea- 
son were just beginning. One of the most splendid 
of these ceremonies is the procession in honor of the 
Santa Culla; that is, the cradle in which the priestly 
tradition says the infant Jesus was carried into Egypt. 
This is the great relic and chief distinction of the Church 
of Santa Maria Maggiore, though it contains a number 
of others, such as the bodies of St. Matthew and St. 
Jerome, and two little bags of the brains of Thomas a 
Becket, and "one of the pictures attributed to St. Luke 
(and announced to be such in a papal bull attached to 
the walls !), much revered for the belief that it stayed the 
plague which decimated the city during the reign of 
Pelagius II., and that (after its intercession had been 
sought by a procession by order of Innocent VIII.) it 
brought about the overthrow of the Moorish dominion in 
Spain." 

Moreover, this church of Santa Maria Mag- 

The Miraculous . ° 

Snow in giorc is by no means lacking in legendary 
Summertime. ,^^^ architectural interest. It was founded 
A. D. 352, by Pope Liberius and John, a Roman patrician, 
to commemorate an alleged miraculous fall of snow, which 
covered this spot of ground and no other, on the 5th of 
August, and an alleged appearance of the Virgin Mary, 
in a vision, at the same time, showing them that she 
had thus appropriated the site of a new temple, all of 
which is duly represented in a fine painting on the wall 



274 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

of the church, and in two of Murillo's most beautiful 
pictures in the Academy at Madrid, and commemorated 
every year on the 5th of August by a solemn high mass, 
and by showers of white rose leaves thrown down con- 
stantly through two holes in the ceiling, "like a leafy mist 
between the priests and the worshippers." 
A Splendid The worshippcrs of the Virgin have not 

Church. i^een lacking in their efforts to erect a suit- 
ably sumptuous building on the site of this "miracle." 
The magnificent nave, with its avenue of forty-two 
columns of Greek marble, surmounted by a frieze of 
mosaic pictures; the glorious pavement of opus Alexan- 
driniun, whose "crimson and violet hues temper the white 
and gold of the walls"; the grand baldacchino, with its 
four porphyry columns wreathed with gilt leaves; and 
the splendid tomb chamber of Pius IX.' (predecessor of 
the late Pope Leo XIII.), with its riot of rich marbles 
and alabaster, in front of the high altar — to say nothing 
of the almost incredibly costly chapels opening into the 
nave — combine to give S. Maria Maggiore a proud place 
among the very finest of the fine basilicas of Rome. 
A Dazzling But uot all the splendors of the building, 

Scene. j^qj. ^\i thg fasciuatiou of its "miracles" and 

legends, nor all the spell of its other relics, can equal the 
interest attaching to the "Santa Culla/' the holy cradle. 
On the afternoon of Christmas Day, we walked through 
the wet streets to the front of the church, pushed back 
the heavy, dirty screen of padded canvas, such as hangs 
at the door of every great church in Italy, however fine, 
and, stepping within, found ourselves in the midst of a 
scene of the most dazzling splendor. The building was 
brilliantly illuminated with hundreds of electric lights and 
huge candles, which were sharply reflected by the glisten- 
ing marbles on every hand ; the air was heavy with clouds 



RELICS AT ROME. 275 

of incense, through the blue smoke of which the lofty 
ceiling looked higher than ever, and the organ and choir 
were pouring forth the richest music, while a dense crowd 
of people, many thousands, all standing, watched with 
eager interest a small, crate-like object, made of slats of 
dark wood, which rested on the high altar, enclosed in a 
glass case, with a gold baby on top and gold ornaments 
round about. 

The Holy We pushcd our way through the crowd, so 

Cradle. as to get a satisfactory view of it while the 

service was in progress — the genuflections, the robing 
and disrobing of the archbishop, the chanting, and the 
rest — after which six men, dressed in pure white from 
head to foot (white gloves included), except for a red 
circle and cross on the breast, knelt before the cradle, 
then lifted it from the altar, with its gold and glass set- 
ting, and placing it on a kind of litter on their shoulders, 
under a gilt and white canopy borne by other attendants, 
marched with it thus, in procession around the church, 
along with a large crucifix under another canopy, and 
followed by a long line of cardinals, bishops, priests and 
acolytes, carrying it back finally to its place in the sacristy, 
where it will remain till next Christmas Day. 

We squeezed our way through the great 

of Rome crowd at the door, and walked back to our 

a Babe or hotcl, woudcriug to what extent the usual 

Roman Catholic conception of Christ had 

deprived that organization of real spiritual energy ; for, 

almost invariably, Roman Catholic art represents him 

either as a dead Christ on the cross, or a babe in his 

mother's arms, and hardly ever as the risen and glorified 

Lord, the Conqueror of death, the Leader of his people, 

to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth — the 

more usual Protestant conception. And we asked our- 



276 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

selves whether this difference did not help to explain the 
greater hopefulness, vigor and growth of Protestant 
Christianity in these strenuous latter days. 

But we were soon to learn that the Roman 
that Owns Catholics did not think of the infant Christ 
aLaree as lacking in power of a certain sort; on 

the contrary they ascribe miraculous agency 
even to an image of the divine babe. On the afternoon 
of December 29th, as two of our party were returning to 
our hotel, they passed at the foot of the Capitoline Hill 
a carriage, out of the window of which hung a ribbon 
or sash of cloth of gold, and they were not a little aston- 
ished to observe that, as this carriage rolled along, people 
knelt reverently before it on the street. Inside they saw 
two bareheaded men holding a child on a pillow with a 
wealth of lace about it. They thought perhaps it was 
the royal carriage with the baby princess, but they could 
not imagine why men should be nursing the baby, as that 
is usually the employment of women, nor why the people 
should kneel so reverently before the young princess, a 
thing which they never did even for the king himself. 
The fact is that, as they learned on the following after- 
noon when visiting the Church of Ara Coeli, on the 
Capitoline Hill, the carriage in question belonged to a 
far more important personage in Rome than any princess, 
though that personage was not even a living baby, but 
only a doll. It was the coach of the famous Bambino — 
// Santissimo Bambino — which with its dress of gold and 
silver tissue and its magnificent diamonds, emeralds and 
rubies, is the chief attraction of this church. 

Dr. Alexander Robertson, in his book on 
Power of the ^^^ Ronian Catholic Church in Italy, says : 
Miraculous "The Bambiuo is a doll about three feet 

high, and it stands on a cushion in a glass 




THK BAMBINO. 



RELICS AT ROME. 277 

case. It is clad in rich robes with a crown on its head, 
a regal order across its breast, and embroidered slippers 
on its feet. From head to foot it is one mass of dazzling 
jewelry, gold chains, strings of pearls, and diamond brace- 
lets and rings, which not only cover the neck, arms and 
fingers, but are suspended, intermixed with crosses, stars, 
hearts, monograms, and every kind of precious stone, to 
all parts of its body. The only part unweighted with 
gems is its round, priest-like, wax face. But all this dis- 
play of wealth, great in itself, is really only suggestive 
of that untold quantity which it has brought, and is still 
daily bringing, into the coflfers of the church. People 
are continually kneeling before this dumb idol, offering 
petitions and leaving gifts, whilst letters containing re- 
quests, accompanied with post-office orders and checks 
to pay for the granting of the same, arrive by post for 
it from various parts of the globe." 

Hare's Walks in Rome gives the following account of 
the Bambino and one of its most remarkable experiences : 

"It has servants of its own, and a carriage in which 
it drives out with its attendants, and goes to visit the sick ; 
for, though an infant, it is the oldest medical practitioner 
in Rome. Devout peasants always kneel as the blessed 
infant passes. Formerly it was taken to sick persons and 
left on their beds for some hours, in the hope that it would 
work a miracle. Now it is never left alone. In explana- 
tion of this, it is said that an audacious woman formed 
the design of appropriating to herself the holy image 
and its benefits. She had another doll prepared of the 
same size and appearance as the Santissimo, and having 
feigned sickness and obtained permission to have it left 
with her, she dressed the false image in its clothes, and 
sent it back to Ara Coeli. The fraud was not discovered 
till night, when the Franciscan monks were awakened by 



278 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

the most furious ringing of bells and by thundering 
knocks at the west door of the church, and hastening 
thither, could see nothing but a wee naked pink foot peep- 
ing in from under the door; but when they opened the 
door, without stood the little naked figure of the true 
Bambino of Ara Coeli, shivering in the wind and rain — 
so the false baby was sent back in disgrace, and the real 
baby restored to its home, never to be trusted away alone 
any more." 

But if I dwell on all these interesting relics 

The Communion ^ 

Table Used and images as I have done on the Holy 
by Christ. Cradle and the miraculous Bambino, I shall 
never finish even the brief list of them which I had in 
mind when I began. I must hasten on, contenting myself 
with a bare mention of a few of the more notable relics 
at the other churches. 

On the 8th of January we paid our first visit to the 
great Church of St. John Lateran,^ and here also the 
relics interested us more than anything else. Under the 
canopy in the centre the skulls of St. Peter and St. Paul 
are preserved. Beneath the altar we saw the wooden 
table on which the Apostle Peter is said to have "cele- 
brated mass" in the house of Pudens. The interest of 
this relic, however, is completely eclipsed by that of an- 
other relic over an altar at a little distance in the same 
church, viz: the cedar table used by our Lord and his 
disciples in the Last Supper. This table is concealed 
behind a bronze relief representing that solemn scene in 
the Upper Room at Jerusalem. 

"The Basilica claims to possess many valu- 

Other Rehcs ^ ■' 

at St. John able relics. Amongst these are some por- 

Lateran. tions of the manger in which Christ was 

cradled, the shirt and seamless coat made for him by the 

^ Later. — This is the church in which the late Pope Leo XIII. 
is to be buried. 



RELICS AT ROME. 279 

Virgin ; some of the barley loaves and small fishes miracu- 
lously multiplied to feed the five thousand ; the linen cloth 
with which he dried the feet of his apostles ; also Aaron's 
rod, the rod with which Moses smote the Red Sea," etc., 
etc. (Cook's Southern Italy, p. 114.) We did not see 
these, but in the cloister behind this church we were 
shown a marble slab on pillars which was once an altar, 
"at which the officiating priest doubted of the Real Pres- 
ence, when the wafer fell from his hand through the 
stone, leaving a round hole, which still remains." Here, 
too, we were shown a larger slab resting on pillars, more 
than six feet from the ground, which marks the height 
of our Saviour; also a porphyry slab, upon which the 
soldiers cast lots for his seamless robe ; and some columns 
from Pilate's house in Jerusalem, which were rent by the 
earthquake of the crucifixion. 
„,„.„. But the great relic of Pilate's House, and 

The Holy Stairs =' . ' . 

from Pilate's ouc of the most interesting of all the relics 
Palace. j^^ Rome, is across the street from St. John 

Lateran, viz., the world-renowned Scala Santa, or Holy 
Stairway, a flight of twenty-eight marble steps, once as- 
cended by our Saviour in the palace of Pilate, and brought 
from Jerusalem to Rome in 326 by the Empress Helena, 
mother of Constantine the Great. They are covered with 
a wooden casing, but holes have been left through which 
the marble steps can be seen. Two of them are stained 
with the Saviour's blood. These spots are covered with 
glass. The light was rather dim, and as we entered a 
gentleman struck a match and held it over one of these 
glass-covered stains to show it to his little girl, so that, 
passing just at that moment, we also had a good view. 
No foot is allowed to touch the Scala Santa; 
Crawled Up ^^ must be ascended on the knees. A num- 
and Walked bcr of pcoplc wcrc going up in this way 
when we entered, pausing on each step to 



28o A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

repeat a prayer, for which indulgences are granted by 
the Pope, There are stairways on each side, by which 
those who have thus crawled up may walk down. The 
only man I know of that ever walked down the Holy 
Stairs themselves, and the most illustrious man that ever 
crawled up them on his knees, was Martin Luther. When 
he had mounted slowly half way up, step by step on his 
knees, he seemed to hear a voice saying, "The just shall 
live by faith." Martin Luther rose from his knees, walked 
down the staircase, and left the place a free man so far 
as this superstition was concerned, and shortly afterwards 
became the most formidable foe that ever assailed the 
falsehood and corruption of the Romish Church. 

At the top of the Scala Santa we saw 
'^'''p^Juau and through a grating the beautiful silver taber- 
the Shoes naclc Containing the great relic which has 
of Christ. given to this chapel the name of Sancta 
Sanctorum, viz. : the portrait of Christ, held by the 
Romish Church to be authentic, having been drawn in 
outline by St. Luke and finished by an angel, whence its 
name "Acheiropoeton," i. e., the picture made without 
hands. The relic chamber here contains fragments of 
the true cross, the sandals of Christ, and "the iron bar 
of Hades which he brought away with him from that 
doleful region," ^ but we did not see these. 

A short walk beyond the Scala Santa and 

Theinscrip- the Latcran brings us to the Church of 

Cross, and S. Croce in Gerusalemme, which is spe- 

the Finger cially rich in relics. Here our party was 

shown a piece of the true cross of Christ 

and the original plank bearing the inscription, "Jesus, 

Nazarene King," in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, which was 

' The Roman Catholic Church in Italy, Alexander Robertson, 
p. 113. 



RELICS AT ROME. 281 

placed over his head ; also one of the nails used in his 
crucifixion, and two of the thorns of his crown; besides 
a large piece of the cross of the penitent thief who was 
executed with him ; and, most interesting of all in some 
respects, the finger used by Thomas to resolve his doubts 
as to the resurrection of Christ (John xx, 24-28). 
. „ , , In Percy's Romanism it is said that "the 

A Bottle of , -' _ 

The Blood of Hst of rcHcs ou the right of the apsis of 
Christ. g Croce includes the finger of S. Thomas, 

apostle, with which he touched the most holy side of our 
Lord Jesus Christ ; one of the pieces of money with which 
the Jews paid the treachery of Judas; great part of the 
veil and of the hair of the most blessed Virgin ; a mass 
of cinders and charcoal united in the form of a loaf, with 
the fat of S. Lawrence, martyr ; one bottle of the most 
precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; another of the 
milk of the most blessed Virgin ; a little piece of the stone 
where Christ was born; a little piece of the stone where 
our Lord sat when he pardoned Mary Magdalene; of 
the stone where our Lord wrote the law given to Moses 
on Mount Sinai; of the stone where reposed SS. Peter 
and Paul ; of the cotton which collected the blood of 
Christ ; of the manna which fed the Israelites ; of the rod 
of Aaron which flourished in the desert; of the relics of 
the eleven prophets !" ^ 

But our party saw none of these except the finger of 
Thomas. It is to be hoped that the others have been 
withdrawn from exhibition, for surely superstition and 
vulgarity can no further go. I fear, however, that those 
who are willing to pay enough can still see "one bottle 
of the most precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ," and 
"another of the milk of the most blessed Virgin" ! There 
isalso"wna ampulla lactis Beatae Mariae Virginis" among 

^Hare, II., 93. 
19 



282 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

the many relics to be seen in the Church of SS. Cosmo 
and Damiano, near the Forum. 

No Women It is a curious illustration of Romish wrong- 

Admitted, headedness that women are never allowed to 
enter the Chapel of St. Helena, in the Church of S. Croce, 
except on the festival of the Saint, August i8th, notwith- 
standing the fact that St. Helena herself was a woman, 
and that the church owes its existence to her and is also 
indebted to her for the piece of the true cross which it 
boasts, and which has given it its name. So while men 
are permitted to go inside the chapel of St. Helena, women 
are stopped at the entrance and only allowed to peer 
through the railing. The same degrading discrimination 
is made in the Church of S. Prassede (who also was a 
woman) as to entering the splendid chapel, Orto del 
Paradiso, which contains the column of blood jasper to 
which Christ was bound, and which was "given by the 
Saracens to Giovanni Colonna, cardinal of this church, 
and legate of the Crusade, because when he had fallen 
into their hands and was about to be put to death, he 
was rescued by a marvellous intervention of celestial 
light." Females are never allowed to enter this chapel 
except upon Sundays in Lent, but are permitted to look 
at the relic through a grating.^ 

The mention of this column reminds me of 

°"stonerof the two columns in the Church of S. Maria 

Great Transpontina, on the other side of the Tiber, 

near St. Peter's, which bear, inscriptions stat- 
ing that they were the pillars to which St. Peter and St. 
Paul were fastened, respectively, when they suffered flag- 
ellation by order of Nero. A little farther on towards St. 
Peter's is the Piazza Scossa Cavalli, with a pretty foun- 

^ Hare's Walks in Rome, II., pp. i66, 167. 



RELICS At ROME. 283 

tain. "Its name bears witness to a curious legend, which 
tells how when S. Helena returned from Palestine, bring- 
ing with her the stone on which Abraham was about to 
sacrifice Isaac, and that on which the Virgin Mary sat 
down at the time of the presentation of the Saviour in the 
temple, the horses drawing these precious relics stood still 
at this spot, and refused every effort to make them move. 
Then Christian people, 'recognizing the finger of God,' 
erected a church on this spot — S. Giacomo Scossa Ca- 
valli — where the stones are still to be seen." 

While speaking of interesting stones, I must 
of St. Peter's uot omit to mention those in the Church of 
Knees. g Franccsca Romana, near the Forum, con- 

taining the marks of the knees of St. Peter — (which 
show, by the way, that this apostle was a giant in size) — 
when he knelt to pray that Simon Magus might be 
dropped by the demons he had invoked to support him in 
the air in fulfilment of his promise to fly. One of these 
stones used to lie in the Via Sacra, and the water which 
collected in the two holes or knee prints was looked upon 
as so potent a remedy of disease that groups of infirm 
people used to gather around them on the approach of a 
shower. According to the legend, the place where Peter 
knelt when he thus effected the discomfiture of Simon 
Magus and brought him to the ground with such force 
that his thigh was fractured, never to be healed, was the 
ancient Via Sacra. But, after the priests had removed 
the stone from the roadway into the church, the incon- 
siderate and iconoclastic explorers of our day, who have 
made so many discoveries in their excavations about the 
Forum, proved that the roadway from which this relic 
was taken was not the ancient Via Sacra at all, but a 
more modern roadway which had been mistaken for it! 



2^4 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

„, „ , In the Mamertine Prisons, which are also 

The Hardness 

of St. Peter's quite closc to the Forum, a depression on 
Head. ^^^ stone Wall by which we descend to the 

lower dungeon is shown as the spot against which St. 
Peter's head rested, though our guide had just told us that 
these stairs were not in existence then and prisoners were 
let down into the dungeon through the hole in the middle 
of the stone floor. Such trifling discrepancies do not 
seem to trouble the average Italian mind. 

St. Peter and St. Paul are said to have been bound in 
this prison for nine months to a pillar, which is shown 
here. "A fountain of excellent water beneath the floor 
of the prison is attributed to the prayers of St. Peter, 
that he might have wherewith to baptize his gaolers, Pro- 
cessus and Martinianus ; but, unfortunately for this eccle- 
siastical tradition, the fountain is described by Plutarch 
as having existed at the time of Jugurtha's imprisonment" 
here, long before the time of St. Peter. 

Another miraculous spiing, still flowing, is shown in 
the Church of SS. Cosmo and Damiano as that which 
burst forth in answer to the prayers of Felix IV., that he 
might have water to baptize his disciples. 

But the most interesting of all the miracu- 

What the Head ° 

of St. Paul lous springs in or around Rome are the three 
^"*' fountains, about two miles from the city, 

where the Apostle Paul was executed. When his head 
was severed from his body it bounded from the earth 
thiee times, crying out thrice, "Jesus ! Jesus! Jesus!" A 
fountain burst from the ground at each of the three spots 
where the severed head struck. It is asserted, in proof 
of this origin of the fountains, that the water of the first 
is still warm, of the second tepid, and of the third cold, 
but we drank of them one after another without being 
able to detect any difference in temperature. The apostle's 



RELICS AT ROME. 285 

head is shown in has relief upon the three altars above 
the fountains. In the church which has been built over 
them we were shown the pillar to which he was bound, 
and the block of marble upon which he was decapitated, 
and, in the vault of another church hard by, the prison in 
which he was placed just before his execution. 

We could not help asking the priest who was our 
escort whether this extraordinary story was still believed. 
His answer was : "Certainly ! There is no reason what- 
ever to doubt it. The facts have been handed down in 
an unbroken succession from eye-witnesses," a position 
which he proceeded to defend at length and with great 
warmth when one of our party in particular manifested 
much slowness to believe. 

., „ Furthermore, the opening of these three 

St. Paurs Use ' . 

of piautiiia's fountains was not the only miracle wrought 
^^''' by the apostle after his death. Mrs. Jame- 

son says : "The legend of his death relates that a certain 
Roman matron named Plautilla, one of the converts of 
S. Peter, placed herself on the road by which S. Paul 
passed to his martyrdom, to behold him for the last time ; 
and when she saw him she wept greatly and besought his 
blessing. The apostle then, seeing her faith, turned to 
her, and begged that she would give him her veil to blind 
his eyes when he should be beheaded, promising to return 
it to her after his death. The attendants mocked at such 
a promise; but Plautilla, with a woman's faith and 
charity, taking off her veil, presented it to him. After his 
martyrdom, S. Paul appeared to her and restored the veil, 
stained with his blood. In the ancient representations of 
the martyrdom of S. Paul, the legend of Plautilla is 
seldom omitted. In the picture by Giotto in the Sacristy 
of S. Peter's, Plautilla is seen on an eminence in the back- 
ground, receiving the veil from the hands of S. Paul, 



286 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

who appears in the clouds above; the same representa- 
tion, but Httle varied, is executed in bas-relief on the 
bronze doors of St. Peter's." 
_^ „ , . , About two miles northeast of the Three 

The Footprints 

of Christ Fountains, and the same distance from the 
in stone. ^j^^^ ^^ ^^^ Appian Way, stands the Church 
of St. Sebastian. Over an altar on the right, as you 
enter, the attendant priest, drawing aside a curtain, shows 
you a slab of dark red stone with two enormous foot- 
prints on it. These, we are told, were made by the feet 
of Christ during an interview with Peter which took place 
near here, on the site of the small Church of Domine 
Quo Vadis. The story is as follows : After the burning 
of Rome, Nero charged the Christians with having fired 
the city. Straightway the first persecution broke forth, 
and many of the Christians were put to death with dread- 
ful torture. The survivors besought Peter not to expose 
his life. As he fled along the Appian Way, Christ ap- 
peared to him travelling towards the city. The fleeing 
apostle exclaimed in amazement, "Domine, quo vadis?" 
(Lord, whither goest thou?), to which, with a look of 
mild sadness, the Saviour replied, "Venio iterum cruciHgi" 
(I come to be crucified a second time), then vanished, 
whereupon the apostle, ashamed of his weakness, returned 
to Rome, and shortly afterwards was crucified there him- 
self. 

The Chains of Another relic of great interest connected 
St. Peter. with the same apostle is shown in the 
Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, in Rome, and indeed 
gives the church its name. The church is not without 
interest for other reasons. For instance, it possesses por- 
tions of the crosses of St. Peter and St. Andrew, and we 
are told that the high altar covers the remains of the 
seven Maccabean brothers. But the basilica is specially 



RELICS AT ROME. 287 

famous for the possession of the greatest masterpiece of 
sculpture since the time of the Greeks — the majestic 
"Moses" of Michelangelo, which draws thousands of 
sightseers who might otherwise never set foot in the 
building. Nevertheless, its chief attraction, to the devout 
Roman Catholic mind, is neither the bones of the Macca- 
bees nor the statue of Moses, but the chains referred to 
in the following familiar passage of Scripture: "Peter 
therefore was kept in prison ; but prayer was made with- 
out ceasing of the church unto God for him. And when 
Herod would have brought him forth, the same night 
Peter was sleeping between two soldiers bound with two 
chains; and the keepers before the door kept the prison. 
And behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and 
a light shined in the prison; and he smote Peter on the 
side, and raised him up, saying. Arise up quickly. And 
his chains fell off from his hands." (Acts xii. 5-7.) 
These two chains were presented by Juvenal, Bishop of 
Jerusalem, to the Empress Eudoxia, wife of Theodosius 
the younger, who placed one of them in the Basilica of 
the apostles in Constantinople and sent the other to Rome, 
where this church was erected as its special shrine. This 
was about the middle of the fifth century. "But the 
Romans could not rest satisfied with the possession of half 
the relic ; and within the walls of this very basilica, Leo L 
beheld in a vision the miraculous and mystical uniting 
of the two chains, since which they have both been ex- 
hibited here, and the day of their being soldered together 
by invisible power, August ist, has been kept sacred in 
the Latin church !" "They are of unequal size, owing to 
many fragments of one of them (first whole links, then 
only filings) having been removed in the course of cen- 
turies by various popes and sent to Christian princes who 
have been esteemed worthy of the favor! The longest 



288 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

is about five feet in length. At the end of one of them 
is a collar, which is said to have encircled the neck of 
St. Peter, They are exposed on the day of the 'station' 
(the first Monday in Lent) in a reliquary presented by 
Pius IX., adorned with statuettes of St. Peter and the 
Angel — to whom he is represented as saying, 'Ecce nunc 
scio vere' (Acts xii. ii). On the following day a priest 
gives the chains to be kissed by the pilgrims, and touches 
their foreheads with them, saying, 'By the intercession of 
the blessed Apostle Peter, may God preserve you from 
evil. Amen.' " ^ 

In the sacristy we found a young priest 

The Benefits , . , . . , . . . . , 

of Buying a domg a thrivmg busmess m copies of the 
Fac-simiie rcHc. Wc bought from him "an iron fac- 
' simile of the chains (about the size of an 
ordinary watch-chain), authenticated by a certificate tes- 
tifying to its having touched the original chains. On the 
back of this certificate was printed an extract from the 
Rules of the Confraternity of the chains of St. Peter, from 
which we learned that all associates in this brotherhood 
must wear such a facsimile as we had just bought, that 
the objects of the Confraternity are "The propagation of 
the veneration of the chains of St. Peter, an increase of 
devotion to the Holy See, prayers for the Pope's inten- 
tion, for the needs of Holy Church, the conversion of 
infidels and sinners, and the extirpation of heresy and 
blasphemy," and that Pius IX. had granted to the mem- 
bers of the Confraternity various indulgences, one of 
which is "A plenary indulgence and remission of all sins ^ 
if one visits the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli on Janu- 
ary 1 8th ' and June 29th,* between the first vespers of the 

' Hare, II., 45- 

* Italics not mine, but so printed in the extract. 

* Feast of St. Peter's Chair. * Feast of St. Peter. 



RELICS AT ROME. 289 

feast and sunset of the said days, or on August ist, or 
any one of the seven days following it. The usual prayers 
for the Holy Father's intention," etc., are comprised in 
these visits. We are told also that "the foregoing indul- 
gences are applicable to the souls in purgatory." 

We may close this running account of the 

The Rehcs m -^ , _ ° ^ 

St. Peter's rcHcs at Rome with a brief mention of those 

Cathedral. ^^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^^ -^^ g^ Pctcr's itSclf, the 

largest and costliest church in the world. The construc- 
tion of it extended over one hundred and seventy-six 
years. The cost of the main building alone was fifty 
million dollars. The annual outlay for repairs is thirty- 
one thousand five hundred dollars. But it cost the 
Romish Church far more than money — it cost her the 
loss of all the leading nations of the world, which had 
been under her dominion till that time. For the expense 
of the vast structure, with its "insolent opulence of mar- 
bles," was so great that Julius II. and Leo X. were obliged 
to meet the enormous outlay by the sale of indulgences, 
and that, as is well known, precipitated the Reformation. 
So that Protestants may well feel a peculiar interest in 
this mighty cathedral. 

It goes without saying that the popes would 
against which ^ot allow the chief church of Roman Ca- 
christ Leaned tholicism to go begging in the matter of 

in the Temple. ,. » , »» » 

relics. And, sure enough, we have no 
sooner pushed aside the heavy padded screen and stepped 
within than we find on our right the Chapel of the Holy 
Column, so called because it contains a pillar which is 
declared to have been that against which our Lord leaned 
when he prayed and taught in the temple at Jerusalem. 
The pillar contains this inscription : "Haec est ilia columna 
in qua DNS N"" Jesus XPS appodiatus dum populo prse- 
dicabat et Deo pno preces in templo effundebat adhaer- 



290 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

endo, stabatque una cum aliis undecim hie circumstant- 
ibus. De Salomonis templo in triumphum hujus Basilicse 
hie locata fuit: demones expelHt et immundis spiritibus 
vexatos liberos Pvddit et multa miraeula eotidie facit. P. 
reverendissimum prem et Dominum Dominum Card, de 
Ursinis. A. D. MDCCCXXVIII." 
~ r^. . r At the other end of the church we are 

The Chair of 

St. Peter. shown an ancient wooden chair, encrusted 
with ivory, which we are told was the Cathedra Petri, 
the episcopal throne of St. Peter and his immediate suc- 
cessors. A magnificent festival in honor of this chair has 
been annually celebrated here for hundreds of years. 

My party seems to be made up of very determined 
Protestants. At any rate, the sight of this relic leads 
an inquisitive person in the party to ask whether the 
Bible does not say that "Peter's wife's mother lay sick 
of a fever." 

"Yes," replies the unfortunate gentleman to whose lot 
it falls to answer all questions of all kinds. 

"Then," continues the Inquisitive Person, "Peter was 
married ?" 

Unfortunate Gentleman: "Yes." 

I. P. : "Do the Popes still marry ?" 

U. G. : "No." 

I. P. : "If 'the first Pope' was married, why should 
not his successors be married, and why should they insist 
upon a celibate clergy in every age, in every country, and 
under all circumstances?" 
The Bones of ^- ^- * "Thesc questious are becoming too 

St. Peter, hard for me. Come, let me show you the 
tomb which contains the bones of St. Peter and St. Paul. 
Only half of their bodies are preserved here, the other 
portion of St. Peter's being in the Church of St. John 



RELICS AT ROME. 291 

Lateran and the other portion of St. Paul's at the mag- 
nificent basilica of St. Paul's without the walls." 

"A circle of eighty-six gold lamps is always burning 
around the tomb of the poor fisherman of Galilee, . . . 
Hence one can gaze up into the dome, with its huge 
letters in purple-blue mosaic upon a gold ground (each 
six feet long) — 'Tu es Petrus, et super banc petram 
sedificabo ecclesiam meam, et tibi dabo claves regni coelo- 
rum.' Above this are four colossal mosaics of the Evan- 
gelists. , . . The pen of St. Luke is seven feet in 
length." 

But we must not permit ourselves to be diverted from 
our proper subject by the vastness and splendor of the 
building, natural as it is to do so when standing under this 
matchless dome. The four huge piers which support the 
dome are used as shrines for the four great relics of the 
church, viz.: i. The lance of St. Longinus, the soldier 
who pierced the Saviour's side; 2. A portion of the true 
cross; 3. The napkin of St. Veronica, containing the 
miraculous impression of our Lord's face; and 4. The 
head of the apostle Andrew. 

I did not see these relics myself, as I was in the East 
when they were exhibited, but on April nth, the day 
before Easter, other members of my party did, that is, 
they saw all of them but Andrew's head, and from a 
letter written me by the youngest of my correspondents 
in my own family, giving not only description, but draw- 
ings of the spear head, the cross and the handkerchief in 
their several frames, I infer that, notwithstanding the 
great height of the Veronica balcony from which they are 
exhibited, my young correspondent and his companions 
fared better in the matter of a good view than Fritz 
in Chronicles of the Schbnherg Cotta Family, who says: 
"To-day we gazed on the Veronica — the holy impression 



292 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

left by our Saviour's face on the cloth S. Veronica pre- 
sented to him to wipe his brow, bowed under the weight 
of the cross. We had looked forward to this sight for 
days, for seven thousand years of indulgence from pen- 
ance are attached to it. But when the moment came we 
could see nothing but a black board hung with a cloth, 
before which another white cloth was held. In a few 
minutes this was withdrawn, and the great moment was 
over, the glimpse of the sacred thing on which hung the 
fate of seven thousand years." 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

The Legends, the Popes, and the Pasquinades. 

T) EFORE quitting the subject of the relics at Rome, I 
-■-^ must give my readers what Hare calls "the extra- 
ordinary history of the manufacture of S. Filomena, now 
one of the most popular saints in Italy, and one towards 
_, ,, , whom idolatry is carried out with frantic 

The Manufac- •' 

tureofst. enthusiasm both at Domo d'Ossola and in 
Phiiomena. ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ Neapolitan States." 

"In the year 1802, while some excavations were going 
forward in the Catacombs of Priscilla, a sepulchre was 
discovered containing the skeleton of a young female ; 
on the exterior were rudely painted some of the symbols 
constantly recurring in these chambers of the dead — an 
anchor, an olive branch (emblems of Hope and Peace), 
a scourge, two arrows, and a javelin; above them the 
following inscription, of which the beginning and end 
were destroyed: 

— "LuMENA Pax Te Cum Fi" — 
The remains, reasonably supposed to be those of one of 
the early martyrs for the faith, were sealed up and de- 
posited in the treasury of relics in the Lateran ; here they 
remained for some years unthought of. On the return 
of Pius VII. from France, a Neapolitan prelate was sent 
to congratulate him. One of the priests in his train, who 
wished to create a sensation in his district, where the long 
residence of the French had probably caused some decay 
of piety, begged for a few relics to carry home, and these 
recently discovered remains were bestowed on him; the 



294 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

inscription was translated somewhat freely to signify 
Santa Philomena, rest in peace. Another priest, whose 
name is suppressed, because of his great humility, was 
favored by a vision in the broad noonday, in which he 
beheld the glorious virgin Filomena, who was pleased to 
reveal to him that she had suffered death for preferring 
the Christian faith and her vow of chastity to the ad- 
dresses of the emperor, who wished to make her his wife. 
This vision leaving much of her history obscure, a certain 
young artist, whose name is also suppressed, perhaps be- 
cause of his great humility, was informed in a vision 
that the emperor alluded to was Diocletian, and at the 
same time the torments and persecutions suffered by the 
Christian virgin Filomena, as well as her wonderful con- 
stancy, were also revealed to him. There were some 
difficulties in the way of the Emperor Diocletian, which 
incline the writer of the historical account to incline to the 
opinion that the young artist in his wisdom may have 
made a mistake, and that the emperor may have been not 
Diocletian, but Maximian. The facts, however, now ad- 
mitted of no doubt ; the relics were carried by the priest 
Francesco da Lucia to Naples ; they were enclosed in a 
case of wood resembling in form the human body; this 
figure was habited in a petticoat of white satin, and over 
it a crimson tunic after the Greek fashion; the face was 
painted to represent nature, a garland of flowers was 
placed on the head, and in the hands a lily and a javelin 
with the point reversed, to express her purity and her 
martyrdom; then she was laid in a half-sitting posture 
in a sarcophagus, of which the sides were glass, and, after 
lying for some time in state in the chapel of the Torres 
family in the Church of Sant' Angiolo, she was carried in 
grand procession to Mugnano, a little town about twenty 
miles from Naples, amid the acclamations of the people, 



THE LEGENDS AND THE POPES. 295 

working many and surprising miracles by the way. . . . 
Such is the legend of S. Filomena, and such the authority 
on which she has become within the last twenty years 
one of the most popular saints in Italy." — Mrs. Jameson's 
Sacred and Legendary Art, p. 671. 

But, after all, the most extraordinary case of saint- 
manufacture is not that of Philomena, but that of 
Buddha! I have not room for the story here, but if any 
one wishes to know how the papacy made Buddha a 
Christian saint, he will find the whole story, with the 
proofs, in A History of the Warfare of Science and 
Theology, by Andrew D. White, LL. D., late President 
and Professor of History at Cornell University, and until 
recently United States Ambassador to Germany. 
"The Courteous A few days ago we visited the Church of 
Spaniard." 5|._ Laureuce Without the Walls, where in 
a silver shrine under the high altar, the remains of St. 
Laurence and St. Stephen are said to rest. The walls 
of the portico of the church are covered with a series 
of frescoes, lately repainted. One series represents the 
story of St. Stephen and that of the translation of his 
relics to this church. "The relics of St. Stephen were 
preserved at Constantinople, whither they had been trans- 
ported from Jerusalem by the Empress Eudoxia, wife of 
Theodosius H. Hearing that her daughter, Eudoxia, wife 
of Valentinian H., Emperor of the West, was afflicted 
with a devil, she begged her to come to Constantinople, 
that her demon might be driven out by the touch of the 
relics. The younger Eudoxia wished to comply, but the 
devil refused to leave her unless St. Stephen was brought 
to Rome. An agreement was therefore made that the 
relics of St. Stephen should be exchanged for those of 
St. Laurence. St. Stephen arrived, and the Empress was 
immediately relieved of her devil ; but when the persons 



296 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

who had brought the relics of St. Stephen from Constan- 
tinople were about to take those of St. Laurence back 
with them, they all fell down dead ! Pope Pelagius 
prayed for their restoration to life, which was granted 
for a short time, to prove the efficacy of prayer, but they 
all died again ten days later ! Thus the Romans knew 
that it would be criminal to fulfil their promise, and part 
with the relics of St. Laurence, and the bodies of the two 
martyrs were laid in the same sarcophagus." And thus 
we know how much more the Romans think of relics 
than of honor and truth. "It is related that when they 
opened the sarcophagus, and lowered into it the body 
of St. Stephen, St. Laurence moved on one side, giving 
the place of honor on the right hand to St. Stephen ; 
hence, the common people of Rome have conferred on 
St. Laurence the title of 'II cortese Spagnuolo' — the 
courteous Spaniard." 

Another series of these pictures in the portico repre- 
sents the story of a sacristan who, coming to pray in this 
church before day, found it filled with worshippers, and 
was told by St. Laurence himself that they were the 
Apostle Peter, the first martyr, Stephen, and other apos- 
tles, martyrs and virgins from paradise, and was ordered 
to go and tell the Pope what he had seen, and bid him 
come and celebrate a solemn mass. The sacristan ob- 
jected that the Pope would not believe him, and asked 
for some visible sign. Then St. Laurence ungirt his robe 
and gave him his girdle. When the Pope was accompany- 
ing him back to the basilica they met a funeral procession. 
To test the powers of the girdle, the Pope laid it on the 
bier, and at once the dead arose and walked. 
The Miracles of That is not the only miracle of resurrection 

St. Dominic, offered to our credulity by these ecclesias- 
tical legends. The three principal frescoes in the chapter 



THE LEGENDS AND THE POPES. 297 

house of the church of St. Sisto, recently painted by the 
Padre Besson, represent three miracles of St. Dominic — 
in each case of raising from the dead — the subjects being 
a mason who had fallen from a scaffold when building 
this monastery, a child, and the young Lord Napoleone 
Orsini, who had been thrown from his horse and instantly 
killed, and who was brought to life by St. Dominic on 
this spot, as is further commemorated by an inscription 
on the wall. But miracles were nothing uncommon in 
the history of the founder of the powerful Dominican 
Order. In the refectory of St. Marco, at Florence, we 
had seen the fine fresco which represents the miraculous 
provision made for him and his forty friars at a time of 
scarcity by two angels. The refectory in which this mira- 
cle took place is at the Church of St. Sabina, on the 
Aventine, in Rome; but there are three other things at 
this church which interested us hardly less than the scene 
of that miracle. One of them is the huge, pumpkin- 
shaped, black stone, two or three times as big as a man's 
head, which the devil is said to have hurled at St. Dominic 
one day when he found him lying prostrate in prayer. 
This stone is the most conspicuous object in the church, 
being set up on a pillar about three feet high, right in 
the middle of the nave. Not far away is the marble 
slab on which the saint was lying at the time that the 
formidable missile was thrown. The adversary's aim was 
not good, and the saint was not harmed. The second 
thing of chief interest here is the Chapel of the Rosary, 
at the other end of the same aisle in which the marble slab 
lies, built on the very spot where St. Dominic had the 
vision in which he received the rosary from the hands of 
the Virgin. The supernatural gift is commemorated in a 
beautiful painting by Sassoferato. It is hardly necessary 
to explain to any of my readers that a rosary is a string 
20 



298 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

of beads used by Roman Catholics to keep the count of 
the number of Pater-nosters and Ave-Marias which they 
repeat, and that this manner of "vain repetitions" was 
first used by the Dominicans among Roman Catholics, 
though the custom was really borrowed from the Moham- 
medans and Brahmins, who still use rosaries. The third 
object is the famous orange tree, now six hundred and 
seventy years old, which is said to have been brought 
from Spain and planted in the court here by St. Dominic 
himself, orange trees having been unknown in Rome be- 
fore that time, and "which still lives, and is firmly believed 
to flourish or fail with the fortunes of the Dominican 
Order." Ladies are not allowed to approach this tree, 
so, as there were ladies in our party, we all contented 
ourselves with a look at it through a window. Hard by, 
of course, there is a room where things are sold to pil- 
grims and visitors. There we bought a rosary, the beads 
of which are made of the fruit of the plant called the 
Thorn of Christ, with the exception of the bead next to 
the cross, which is a tiny dried orange from St. Dominic's 
tree. Enclosed in the cross are a little piece of the wood 
of the tree, and some earth from the catacombs where the 
bodies of Sts. Peter and Paul, and of the holy virgin 
martyrs, Sts. Agnes and Cecilia, reposed for some time. 
The printed leaflet which accompanies our purchase tells 
us that "these rosaries, when sold or ordered, are blessed 
and enriched with the indulgences of the Rosary Confra- 
ternity and the papal blessing. When blessed they may 
be distributed ; hut if resold they lose all the indulgences." 
(Italics ours.) 

Still another relic of great interest in this convent of 
St. Sabina is the crucifix of Michele Ghislieri (afterwards 
Pope Pius v.). "One day, as Ghislieri was about to kiss 
his crucifix, in the eagerness of prayer, the image of 



THE LEGENDS AND THE POPES. 299 

Christ, says the legend, retired of its own accord from his 
touch, for it had been poisoned by an enemy, and a kiss 
would have been death." 

In the Church of St. Gregory, on the Coelian 
^""^.""^ , Hill, the thing that interested us most was 

Miracles ' o 

by Other the picturc by Badalocchi, "commemorating 
Images^" a miracIc on this spot, when, at the moment 
of elevation, the Host is said to have bled 
in the hands of St. Gregory, to convince an unbeliever 
of the truth of transubstantiation." This is the same 
Gregory who presented certain foreign ambassadors with 
a handful of earth from the arena of the Coliseum as a 
relic for their sovereigns, so many martyrs having suf- 
fered death there, and "upon their receiving the gift with 
disrespect, he pressed it, when blood flowed from the 
soil." 

Not far from the Church of St. Gregory we were 
shown the hermitage where St. Giovanni de Matha lived. 
"Before he came to reside here he had been miraculously 
brought from Tunis (whither he had gone on a mission) 
to Ostia, in a boat without helm or sail, in which he 
knelt without ceasing before the crucifix throughout the 
whole of his voyage!" 

Time would fail me to tell of the miraculous surgical 
operation performed by Sts. Cosmo and Damian upon a 
man who was praying in the church dedicated to them, 
and who had a diseased leg amputated without pain by 
the good saints while he slept ; and not only so, but had 
a sound leg, which they had taken from the body of a 
man just buried, substituted for the diseased one. Nor 
can I dwell on the miraculous blindness with which the 
guard sent to seize Pope St. Martin I. was stricken the 
moment he caught sight of the pontiff in St. Maria Mag- 
giore, or the miraculous tears shed by an image of the 



300 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Virgin attached to a neighboring wall when she saw a 
cruel murder committed in the street below, or the ma- 
donnas and crucifixes that spoke to saints on various occa- 
sions. One of these, however, is too significant to be 
omitted altogether. There is in the Church of St. Agos- 
tino a sculptured image of the Madonna and child. "It 
is not long since the report was spread that one day a 
poor woman called upon this image of the Madonna for 
help ; it began to speak, and replied, 'If I had only some- 
thing, then I could help thee, but I myself am so poor!' 
This story was circulated, and very soon throngs of credu- 
lous people hastened hither to kiss the foot of the Ma- 
donna, and to present her zvith all kinds of gifts." (Italics 
mine.) 

The evil methods employed at various times 
How the Papal ^^ replenish the papal treasury are known 

Treasury ^ ^_ ^ -^ 

was Filled, to all readers of history. The best known, 
and how it perhaps, is the shameless traffic in indul- 

was Emptied, j^ r ' 

gences by Tetzel, which helped to precipi- 
tate the Reformation. Hare closes his account of the ex- 
ecution of Beatrice Cenci for complicity in the murder of 
her father v/ith the statement that "sympathy will always 
follow one who sinned under the most terrible of provoca- 
tions, and whose cruel death was due to the avarice of 
Clement VIII. for the riches which the church acquired 
by the confiscation of the Cenci property," and cites the 
pe'tition of Gaspare Guizza (1601), in which he claims a 
reward from the Pope for his service in apprehending 
one of the assassins of Francesco Cenci, on the ground 
that thus "the other accomplices and their confessions 
were secured, and so many thousands of crowns brought 
into the papal treasury." The venality of Pope Alex- 
ander VI.. Rodrigo Borgia (1492-1503), "the wicked and 
avaricious father of Caesar and Lucretia, who is believed 



THE LEGENDS AND THE POPES. 301 

to have died of the poison which he intended for one of 
his cardinals," is thus hit off by Pasquino: 

"Vendit Alexander claves, altaria, Christum; 
Emerat ille prius, vendere jure potest." 

Of Innocent X. (i644-'55), Pasquino says, "Magis amat 
Olympian! quam Olympium," referring to the shameful 
relations existing between this Pope and his avaricious 
sister-in-law, Olympia Maidalchini, who made it her busi- 
ness to secure the profits of the papacy in hard cash. 
Trollope, in his Life of Olympia, says: "No appointment 
to ofifice of any kind was made except in consideration 
of a proportionable sum paid down into her own coffers. 
This often amounted to three or four years' revenue of 
the place to be granted. Bishoprics and benefices were 
sold as fast as they became vacant. One story is told 
of an unlucky disciple of Simon, who in treating with the 
Pope for a valuable see, just fallen vacant, and hearing 
from her a price at which it might be his, far exceeding 
all he could command, persuaded the members of his 
family to sell all they had for the purpose of making this 
profitable investment. The price was paid, and the 
bishopric was given him, but, with a fearful resemblance 
to the case of Ananias, he died within the year, and his 
ruined family saw the see a second time sold by the insa- 
tiable and incorrigible Olympia. . . . During the last 
year of Innocent's life, Olympia literally hardly ever 
quitted him. Once a week, we read, she left the Vatican, 
secretly by night, accompanied by several porters carrying 
sacks of coins, the proceeds of the week's extortions and 
sales, to her own palace. And during these short absences 
she used to lock the Pope into his chamber, and take the 
key with her!" She finally "deserted him on his death- 
bed, making off with the accumulated spoils of his ten 



302 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

years' papacy, which enabled her son, Don Camillo, to 
build the Palazzo Doria Pamfili, in the Corso, and the 
beautiful Villa Doria Pamfili," west of the Janiculan Hill. 
This villa, with its casino, garden, lake, fountain, pine- 
shaded lawns and woods, and its fine view of St. Peter's 
standing out against the green Campagna beyond, and the 
blue Sabine mountains in the distance, is to this day one 
of the loveliest villas in Italy, and the favorite resort of 
the latter-day Romans and visitors to their city on the 
two afternoons of the week on which it is open to pedes- 
trians and two-horse carriages. 

The notorious Simony practiced by the popes, in 
which, as we have just seen, Olympia became such an 
adept, gave rise to the biting Latin couplet — 

"An Petrus Romse fuerit, sub judice lis est; 
Simonem Romae nemo fuisse negat." 

Some of the modern methods of making use of the Pope 
for purposes of gain are less objectionable than those of 
Olympia. Dr. Alexander Robertson, in his Roman Catho- 
lic Church in Italy, just published, says : "One of the 
very latest novelties of the 'Pope's Shop' is a penny-in- 
the-slot blessing machine. Specimens of this were lately 
to be seen in the Corso, Rome, about half way between the 
Piazza Colonna and the Piazza del Popolo. A penny is 
dropped into it. The cinematograph, or wheel of life, 
goes round, when, lo ! there appears a long procession 
of richly clothed cardinals and monsignori, and then the 
Pope in a sedan chair, accompanied by his Swiss Guards. 
As he is carried past the spectator, he turns towards the 
window of his chair, a smile overspreads his face, he raises 
his hands, and gives his blessing. On these machines 
there is an inscription to the effect that the blessing thus 
given and received is equivalent to that given by the Pope 



THE LEGENDS AND THE POPES. 303 

in person in St. Peter's. Truly a novel way of turning an 
honest penny!" We hear that a rash churchman, not 
liking the facts just stated, undertook to deny them in the 
public prints, when up spoke some English gentlemen, 
who had been in Rome recently, and bowled the church- 
man over with the statement that they had themselves 
seen this blessing machine on the Corso. 

One never touches this subject of the vast wealth of 
the papacy without calling to mind the well-known re- 
joinder of the great theologian, Thomas Aquinas, when 
the Pope was showing him all his money and riches, and 
said, "You see, Thomas, the church cannot now say what 
it said in early times, 'Silver and gold have I none.' " 
"No," answered Aquinas, "nor can it say, 'Rise up and 
walk'" (Acts iii. 6). This loss of spiritual power, this 
loss of ability to minister salvation to others, is one of 
the most melancholy results of the corruption of the 
papacy. 

Dr. Alexander Robertson, in his recent book 
Some Ugly j^ Roman Catholic Church in Italy, 

Things in -^ 

the Lives of which has rcccivcd the hearty approval of 
the Popes. ^^^ j^.j^^ ^f j^^jy ^^^ j^jg p^j^g Minister, 

says : "There are few, I daresay, who have looked into 
the history of the popes, no matter what their religious 
faith may be, who will not agree with me when I say that 
it does not afford pleasant reading. One's intellect rebels 
against their preposterous claims and pretensions, and 
one's moral sense against their character and lives. 
Amongst them there were some good men, some learned 
men, and some really able men; but, taking them all in 
all, they were, beyond doubt, amongst the lowest class of 
men to be found on the pages of history. To wade 
through their lives is to cross a pestiferous moral swamp 
of worldliness, simony, nepotism, concubinage, personal 



304 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

animosities, sanguinary feuds, forged decretals, plunder- 
ings, poisonings, assassinations, massacres, death." ^ 

One may smile at such papal peccadilloes as the vanity 
of Paul II., who was chiefly remarkable for his personal 
beauty, and was so vain of his appearance that, when he 
was elected Pope, he wished to take the name of For- 
mosus. One may be amused at the intense self-esteem 
of Urban VIII., of whose spoliation of ancient Rome 
Pasquino says, "Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt 
Barberini," and who, in the Barberini palace, had the 
Virgin and angels represented as bringing in the orna- 
ments of the papacy at his coronation, and in another 
room a number of the Barberini bees (the family crest) 
flocking against the sun, and eclipsing it — to symbolize 
the splendor of the family. But our feeling changes when 
we read that "he issued a bull by which the name, estates 
and privileges of his house might pass to any living male 
descendant, legitimate or illegitimate, whether child of 
prince or priest," lest the family of Barberini might be- 
come absorbed in that of Colonna. And we do not go 
far in our reading about such popes before the feeling 
of amusement yields to one of sadness, indignation and 
horror. We need not insist upon the story of the female 
Pope Joan, who is said to have secured her election to 
the papal throne disguised as a man, and to have reigned 
two years as John VIII., and then to have died a shameful 

^ It was a bad day for the cause of truth when Foxe's Book of 
Martyrs was allowed to go out of general circulation. When I was 
a boy it was no uncommon thing to see copies of it in American 
homes. Now it is rarely seen. A new and corrected edition of it 
ought to be brought out and given wide circulation. There have 
been not a few indications this year that our people are forgetting 
some of the most instructive history of all the past, and those who 
seem to be most oblivious of it are the editors of some of the 
secular newspapers. 



THE LEGENDS AND THE POPES. 305 

death; for^ notwithstanding the indisputable fact that till 
1600 her head was included among the terra cotta repre- 
sentations of the other popes in the Cathedral of Sienna, 
and was inscribed "Johannes VHI., Femina de Anglia," 
and that it was then changed into a head of Pope Zacha- 
rias by the Grand Duke, at the request of Pope Clement 
Vni., the story is now generally discredited. But there 
are many other facts, established beyond controversy, 
which explain fully the feeling of the great majority of 
the Italian people and the verdict of the accredited his- 
torians of the world. When the penitential Pope, Adrian 
VI. (i522-'23), died of drinking too much beer, "the 
house of his physician was hung with garlands by mid- 
night revellers, and decorated with the inscription, *Lib- 
eratori Patriae, S. P. Q. R.' " The nepotism of the 
learned, brilliant and witty Paul III. "induced him to 
form Parma into a duchy for his natural son Pierluigui, 
to build the Farnese Palace, and to marry his grandson 
Ottavio to Marguerite, natural daughter of Charles V." 
John XII., the first Pope who took a new name, "scan- 
dalized Christendom by a life of murder, robbery, adul- 
tery and incest." Of the tombs of the eighty-seven popes 
who were buried in the old basilica of St. Peter's, only 
two were replaced when the present building was erected, 
those of the two popes who lived in the time and excited 
the indignation of Savonarola — "Sixtus IV., with whose 
cordial concurrence the assassination of Lorenzo de' 
Medici was attempted, and Innocent VIII., the main 
object of whose policy was to secure place and power 
for his illegitimate children," sixteen in number, and who 
is represented on his tomb as holding in his hand the 
spear of "St. Longinus," which had pierced the side of 
Christ. This spear was sent to Innocent VIII. by the 
Sultan Bajazet, nearly fifteen hundred years after the 



3o6 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

crucifixion, and, as we have already seen, is now pre- 
served in St. Peter's as one of its four chief reHcs. 
Guicciardini says of the death of Alexander VI.: "All 
Rome ran with indescribable gladness to visit the corpse. 
Men could not satiate their eyes with feeding on the car- 
case of the serpent who, by his unbounded ambition and 
pestiferous perfidy, by every demonstration of horrible 
cruelty, monstrous lust and unheard-of avarice, selling 
without distinction things sacred and profane, had filled 
the world with venom." 

"Pope Paul V. granted dispensations and pensions to 
any persons who would assassinate Fra Paolo Sarpi ; 
Pope Pius V. offered, as Mr. Froude tells us, 'remisi^ion 
of sin to them and their heirs, with annuities, honors and 
promotions, to any cook, brewer, baker, vintner, physician, 
grocer, surgeon, or others/ who would make away with 
Queen Elizabeth ; and Pope Gregory XIII. offered a high 
place in heaven to any one who would murder the Prince 
of Orange; and the poor wretch, Balthazar Gerard, who 
did the infamous deed, actually told his judges 'that he 
would soon be a saint in heaven, and would have the first 
place there next to God,' whilst his family received a 
patent of nobility, and entered into the possession of the 
estate of the Prince in the Franche Comte — rewards 
promised for the commission of the crime by Cardinal 
Granvelle." (Dr. Alexander Robertson's Roman Catholic 
Church in Italy, p. 94.) 

These are some of the things that help to explain not 
only the tone of the pasquinades, not only the indictments 
of the world's leading historians, which are to be presently 
cited, but also the present attitude of something like 
twenty millions of the thirty-odd millions of Italy's in- 
habitants, who have forsaken the church altogether. 

What idea the people have of the Jesuits in particular 



THE LEGENDS AND THE POPES. 307 

is well shown by the legend connected with the Piazza 
del Gesu, the great open space in front of the Jesuit 
church, which is considered the windiest place in Rome. 
The story is that the devil and the wind were one day 
taking a walk together. "When they came to this square, 
the devil, who seemed to be very devout, said to the 
wind, 'Just wait a minute, mio caro, while I go into this 
church.' So the wind promised, and the devil went into 
the Gesu, and has never come out again — and the wind 
is blowing about in the Piazza del Gesu to this day." 

. , One of the interesting objects in Rome is 

Pasquino s _ . . 

View of a mutilated statue called Pasquino, which 
the Pope. stands at the corner of the Orsini Palace, 
one of the most central and public places in the city. The 
reason for the interest attaching to this almost shapeless 
piece of marble is that for centuries it was used for 
placarding those satires upon the popes which, by their 
exceeding cleverness and biting truth, have made the 
name of pasquinade famous the world over. No squib 
that was ever affixed to that column had a keener edge 
than the one known as "The Antithesis of Christ," which 
appeared at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and 
runs as follows: 

Christ said, "My kingdom is not of this world." 
The Pope conquers cities by force. 

Christ had a crown of thorns : 
The Pope wears a triple diadem. 

Christ washed the feet of his disciples : 
The Pope has his kissed by kings. 

Christ paid tribute: 
The Pope takes it. 

Christ fed the sheep: 

The Pope- wishes to be master of the world. 



3og A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Christ carried on his shoulders the cross : 

The Pope is carried on the shoulders of his servants in liveries 
of gold. 

Christ despised riches : 

The Pope has no other passion than for gold. 

Christ drove out the merchants from the temple: 
The Pope welcomes them. 

Christ preached peace: 

The Pope is the torch of war. 

Christ was meekness : 

The Pope is pride personified. 

Christ promulgated the laws that the Pope tramples under foot. 
"But," some one may say, "the pasquinades 

What the -^.1 J t •, , 

Italians weve Written long ago, and, while they are 

now Think doubtlcss truc descriptions of the papacy of 

about it. , , , , , , 

the past, surely no one would take the same 
view now." For answer I may quote the statement of 
Dr. Raffaelle Mariano, Professor of Philosophy in the 
University of Naples, who is not a Protestant, but, as he 
tells us, was "bom in the Roman Catholic Church," and 
was "a fervent Catholic from infancy." Speaking of the 
vast difference which he found between the teachings of 
the church and those of the New Testament as to what 
is necessary to salvation, he says, "Therefore, Roman 
Catholicism is not only not Christianity, but it is the very 
antithesis of Christianity," a statement every whit as 
strong as Pasquino's. Some American Protestants, espe- 
cially those who have personal friends in the Roman 
Catholic Church whom they honor and love — and there 
are many people in that church who are richly worthy 
of honor and love, and who do not approve of the 
evils we have been describing any more than we do — 
are sometimes disposed to think that Protestant writers 



THE LEGENDS AND THE POPES. 309 

are too severe in their condemnation of the Romish 
Church as a system. A visit to Italy, the centre of Ro- 
manism, would quickly disabuse these overcharitable 
Protestants of that impression. We have all read of 
such things as are described above in connection with 
the relics and legends, but they seem far away and unreal, 
and almost impossible, until we come to the home of 
Romanism and find them all around us. Then it ceases 
to surprise us that so large a proportion of the most 
intelligent men in Italy occupy a position of indifference 
and unbelief, or hostility and scorn, towards the Christian 
religion, for Romanism is the only Christianity that most 
of them know. Let it be remembered, too, that the King, 
able, conscientious, patriotic, devoted to the welfare of 
his people, and the Prime Minister, Zanardelli, like his 
predecessor, Crispi, and the members of Parliament, and 
the army and navy, and the whole government which has 
given Italy such wonderful stability and prosperity since 
the overthrow of the papal dominion and opened before 
the nation a future of so much promise, are all standing 
aloof from the Pope. Let any one see one of the great 
pilgrimages from every part of the country to the tomb 
of Victor Emmanuel, who freed Italy, as we saw it the 
other day, and observe the immense popularity of the 
great liberator and his successors of the house of 
Savoy, and let him note the firm opposition of Italy's 
leading men to the papacy, and he will see that the 
view of the Pope which the secular newspapers so per- 
sistently seek to force upon the people of the English- 
speaking world simply cannot be that of the thoughtful 
men of Italy. 

By the way, I see plenty of women confessing to the 
priests, but very, very few men. The text-book used in 
the training of priests as father-confessors, and the 



310 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

standard work of the church on that subject, approved 
by Pope Leo XIII., is Liguori's Moral Philosophy. "On 
July 14, 1901, the Asino, a daily newspaper published in 
Rome, printed in its columns, and also in the form of large 
bills, which it caused to be posted up in public places in 
the chief cities of Italy, a challenge offering one thousand 
francs to any Roman Catholic newspaper which would 
have the courage to print the Latin text, with an Italian 
translation, of two passages in Liguori's book, which it 
specified. The challenge was never taken up, and it never 
will be, for any one daring to publish the passages named 
would certainly be prosecuted for outraging public de- 
cency" (Dr. Alexander Robertson, Roman Catholic 
Church in Italy, p. 149). Hare says, "It was a curious 
characteristic of the laxity of morals in the time of 
Julius II. (i503-'i3), that her friends did not hesitate to 
bury the famous Aspasia of that age in this church (St. 
Gregorio), and to inscribe upon her tomb: 'Imperia, cor- 
tisana Romana, quae digna tanto nomine, rarae inter 
homines formse specimen dedit.' . . . But this monu- 
ment has now been removed." ^ 

Most of the facts above cited, especially those con- 
cerning the legends and the Popes, except where specific 
acknowledgment is made to other writers, have been 
drawn from Hare's invaluable Walks in Rome. Let us 

' There are other indications of some improvement in this 
matter, but an Anglican resident in Italy, quoted by the Review 
of Reviews as "a painstaking and fair-minded" witness, says, 
"People are not shocked by clerical immorality, but regard it as 
natural and inevitable." To an Anglican friend a Roman prelate 
lamented that a certain cardinal was not elected at the late con- 
clave. But the Anglican replied, "He is a man of conspicuous 
immorality." "No doubt," was the answer, "but yon Americans 
seem to think there is no virtue but chastity. The Cardinal has 
not that, but he is an honest man." 



THE LEGENDS AND THE POPES. 311 

conclude the list with the testimonies of a few eminent 
men of unimpeachable competence and veracity as to the 
character and influence of the Roman Catholic Church as 
a system. 

In the first chapter of his History of Eng- 
Macauiay, ;^^j Lord Macaulay says : "From the time 

Dickens and -^ -^ 

Gladstone on wheu the barbarians overran the Western 
theinfluence En^pij-g to the time of the revival of letters, 

of Romanism. ^ 

the influence of the Church of Rome had 
been generally favorable to science^ to civilization, to good 
government. But during the last three centuries, to stunt 
the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. 
Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been 
made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts 
of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere 
been in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest 
and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, 
been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intel- 
lectual torpor, while Protestant countries, once proverbial 
for sterility and barbarism, have been turned by skill and 
industry into gardens, and can boast of a long list of 
heroes and statesmen, philosophers and poets. Whoever, 
knowing what Italy and Scotland naturally are, and what, 
four hundred years ago, they actually were, shall now 
compare the country round Rome with the country round 
Edinburgh, will be able to form some judgment as to the 
tendency of papal domination. The descent of Spain, 
once the first among the monarchies, to the lowest depths 
of degradation, the elevation of Holland, in spite of many 
natural disadvantages, to a position such as no common- 
wealth so small has ever reached, teach the same lesson. 
Whoever passes in Germany from a Roman Catholic to a 
Protestant principality, in Switzerland from a Roman 
Catholic to a Protestant canton, in Ireland from a Roman 



312 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Catholic to a Protestant county, finds that he has passed 
from a lower to a higher grade of civilization. On the 
other side of the Atlantic the same law prevails. The 
Protestants of the United States have left far behind them 
the Roman Catholics of Mexico, Peru and Brazil. The 
Roman Catholics of Lower Canada remain inert, while 
the whole continent round them is in a ferment with 
Protestant activity and enterprise. The French have 
doubtless shown an energy and intelligence which, even 
when misdirected, have justly entitled them to be called a 
great people. But this apparent exception, when ex- 
amined, will be found to confirm the rule, for in no coun- 
try that is called Roman Catholic has the Roman Catholic 
Church, during several generations, possessed so little 
authority as in France." 

Charles Dickens, in a letter written from Switzerland, 
in 1845, to his friend and biographer, Forster, says : 'Tn 
the Simplon, hard by here, where (at the bridge of St. 
Maurice over the Rhone) the Protestant canton ends and 
a Catholic canton begins, you might separate two per- 
fectly distinct and different conditions of humanity by 
drawing a line with your stick in the dust on the ground. 
On tbe Protestant side — neatness, cheerfulness, industry, 
education, continued aspiration, at least, after better 
things. On the Catholic side — dirt, disease, ignorance, 
squalor and misery. I have so constantly observed the 
like of this since I came abroad that I have a sad mis- 
giving that the religion of Ireland lies at the root of all 
its sorrows." Writing from Genoa, in 1846, Dickens 
says, "If I were a Swiss, with a hundred thousand pounds, 
I would be as steady against the Catholic canons and the 
propagation of Jesuitism as any Radical among them; 
believinig the dissemination of Catholicity to be the most 
horrible means of political and social degradation left in 
the world." 



THE LEGENDS AND THE POPES. 313 

In connection with Dickens' remark about Ireland, 
we may quote the remarkable statement of Mr. Michael 
McCarthy, himself a Roman Catholic, in his book, Five 
Years in Ireland, pp. 65 and 66, where, after describing 
the welcome of the Belfast Corporation to Lord Cadogan 
on his first visit, in 1895, to the Protestant North of 
Ireland, and their glowing statements about the peaceful 
and prosperous condition of their city and district, he 
contrasts this happy condition with the unhappy state of 
the "rest of Ireland," meaning by that the Roman Catholic 
parts. "In the rest of Ireland there is no social or indus- 
trial progress to record. The man who would say of it 
that it was 'progressing and prospering,' or that 'its work 
people were fully employed,' or that there existed *a con- 
tinued development of its industries,' or that its towns 
'had increased in value and population,' would be set 
down as a madman. It is in this seven-eighths of Ireland 
that the growing and great organization of the Catholic 
Church has taken root." 

Mr. Gladstone, in an article on "Italy and her Church," 
in the Church Quarterly Review for October, 1875, says: 
"Profligacy, corruption and ambition, continued for ages, 
unitedly and severally, their destructive work upon the 
country, through the Curia and the papal chair; and in 
doing it they of course have heavily tainted the faith of 
which that chair was the guardian." Elsewhere he says, 
"There has never been any more cunning blade devised 
against the freedom, the virtue and the happiness of a 
people than Romanism." 

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his Marble Faun, which, by 
the way, contains the most charming of all the descriptive 
writing about Rome, put the case none too strongly when 
he spoke of being "disgusted with the pretense of holiness 
and the reality of nastiness, each equally omnipresent'* 



314 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

in the city of the popes. The new government has 
wrought a great change in this respect, and Rome is in 
many parts of it now quite a clean city. 

There, then, are the facts as to the influence of the 
Roman Catholic Church. I am, of course, very far from 
saying that there are no good people in that church. As 
I have already stated, I believe that there are many good 
people in it, but my own observation has satisfied me 
that the verdict of history as to the baleful influence of 
the system is absolutely correct. 

"What, then," some one may ask, "do the good people 
in that church think of all the immoralities and frauds 
that it has condoned and fostered?" The answer is that 
the really good people in that church must grieve over 
them and deplore them just as the good people in other 
churches do. 

P. S. — It is generally believed, and apparently with 
good reason, that the new Pope, Pius X., is a better man 
than many of his predecessors, and that he cannot be 
charged with the immoralities or the ambition and avarice 
which characterized them. Let us hope that he will have 
the courage to attempt some real reform in the lives of 
many of his clergy. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 
The Old Forces and the New in the Eternal City. 

WELL, we have seen the Pope. Hearing that a body 
of Italian pilgrims were to be received by the 
pontiff at the Vatican, and having assured ourselves that 
the function was one which would involve no official 
An Audience recognition of the Pope on our part, and 
with the Pope, that we should be merely Protestant specta- 
tors, we gladly accepted the offer of tickets for the audi- 
ence, and, supposing in our simplicity that, as the recep- 
tion was set for noon, we should be sufficiently early if 
we went at eleven o'clock, we drove up to the main en- 
trance of the Vatican at that hour. There was a great 
throng of people about the door, but our tickets obtained 
for us immediate entrance along with a stream of other 
ladies and gentlemen. The regulation attire for these 
functions is full evening dress for gentlemen, while ladies 
wear black, with no hat, but with a lace mantilla on the 
head. We first passed through a double line of the 
famous Swiss Guards, in their extraordinary uniform of 
crimson, yellow and black, designed by no less a person 
than Michael Angelo. Then we were shown up the great 
stairway, and passing through a couple of large rooms, 
one of which was adorned with Raphael's frescoes, we 
found ourselves at the entrance of a long and spacious 
hall, already densely crowded, as it seemed to us, but 
with a space kept open down the centre between the rows 
of seats on either side. Looking down this open space, 
we could see at the other end, on a slightly raised plat- 
form, the pontifical throne, upholstered in red velvet, with 



3i6 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

golden back and arms, effectively set in the midst of 
crimson hangings, which swept in rich masses from the 
lofty ceiling to the floor. Preceded by guards, we trav- 
elled the whole length of the hall, and found, to our great 
gratification, that our seats were quite close to the throne. 
So that we had an excellent position for seeing and hearing 
all that was going on. We soon noticed that many of the 
hundreds of people present, like some of us, had not ob- 
served the regulations as to dress. Many others had. 
Mingled with the soberer attire of the spectators, pilgrims 
and priests, we saw now and then a violet cassock, as 
one bishop after another drifted in. Apart from these 
vestments, there was no semblance of a religious gather- 
ing. It was more like a social function, and the people 
were chatting gaily, the j oiliest and noisiest crowd being 
a group of young seminarians, prospective priests, who 
occupied the same bench with us and the two or three 
nearest to it. After we had been there an hour the great 
clock of St. Peter's struck twelve. Instantly all the noisy 
young seminarians rose to their feet and began to recite, 
in a lower, humming tone, their Ave-Marias and Pater- 
Nosters. As soon as the reciting and counting of beads 
was over, as it was in a minute, they struck in again with 
their gay conversation. We had plenty of time to take 
it all in. The Pope is always late, and it was an hour 
after the time fixed for the audience when he appeared; 
but at last he did, and instantly everybody, men and 
women, sprang up on the benche? and chairs, frantically 
waving their handkerchiefs and shouting at the top of 
their voices, "Evviva il Papa-Re! Evviva il Papa-Re!" — 
"Long live the Pope-King ! Long live the Pope-King !" — 
the ablest performer in this part of the ceremony being 
a leather-lunged young priest at my elbow, with a voice 
as powerful and persistent as that of a hungry calf, and 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 317 

who made known his desire for the restoration of the 
temporal power to the Pope with such energy that the 
perspiration rolled down his fat face in shining rivulets. 
I never heard anything like it except in a political con- 
vention or a stock exchange. Accompanied by the Noble 
Guard, a body of picked men renowned for their superb 
physique and clad in resplendent uniform, the Holy 
Father was borne in on an arm-chair, carried by twelve 
men, also in uniform. Occasionally he would rise to his 
feet with evident effort, leaning on, or rather grasping, 
one arm of his chair, and bless the people he was passing, 
with two fingers outstretched in the familiar attitude that 
we have seen in the pictures. At such times the furious 
acclamations, and waving of handkerchiefs, and clapping 
of hands, would be redoubled. He passed within arm's 
length of us, a little knot of Protestants, silent amid the 
uproar. It was a pitiful spectacle. A pallid, feeble, tot- 
tering old man, with slender, shrunken neck, and exces- 
sively sharp and prominent features, nose and chin almost 
meeting — we now understood Zola's description : "The 
simious ugliness of his face, the largeness of his nose, the 
long slit of his mouth, the hugeness of his ears, the con- 
flicting jumble of his withered features." But out of this 
waxen face peered a pair of brilliant dark eyes, the only 
sign of real vitality about him. When he had been care- 
fully lowered by the chair-bearers, and had taken his 
throne on the platform, with his attendants ranged round 
him, the spokesman of the pilgrims came forward and 
read an address, to which the Pope's amanuensis, stand- 
ing by his side, read a brief reply. Then the Pope pro- 
nounced the benediction in a surprisingly clear voice, after 
which the pilgrims were introduced individually, not all 
of them, but a certain number of representative persons 
among them. These all knelt and kissed his hand. When 



3i8 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

this ceremony was over the audience closed, and the Pon- 
tiff was borne out as he came in, amid wild applause. 
^^ „ , , On the third of March, while I was in 

The Pope s Last ' 

Jubilee in Egypt, our party in Rome saw a much 
St. Peter's. more imposing ceremony than the one 1 
have just described. Every one has noticed how numer- 
ous the papal jubilees have been during the last quarter 
of a century, every year or so seeing the celebration of 
some jubilee of the Pope's official life. In twenty-one 
years he has had no less than fourteen of them. Their 
frequency should not surprise us when we remember that 
each of them turns a vast stream of gifts and money 
into the papal treasury from every part of the world. 
One of my correspondents writes me that for the cele- 
bration of March 3rd both sides of the nave of St. Peter's 
were lined with pens or boxes, all free except those near 
the high altar, and in the middle of the nave a passage 
about fifteen feet wide was railed off for the procession. 
"We drove to St. Peter's through a pouring rain about 
7 : 45 A, M. The building was already packed with people. 
It is estimated that there were fifty thousand of us by 
eleven o'clock. We walked down the left aisle and took 
our position at the base of a pillar, where we could see 
the Pope as he entered from the right aisle. There we 
waited from eight o'clock till after eleven. He was an 
hour late. Finally, we heard the silver trumpets sounding 
from the gallery in the dome. His guards preceded him, 
and other attendants bearing swords, maces and a cross. 
The caps indicating the offices he filled before he became 
Pope were carried on cushions by three cardinals. He 
was himself carried on the shoulders of twelve men, 
dressed in rich red costumes. The Pope sat in his red 
and gold chair, richly robed in white satin embroidered 
with gold. He wore a crown of the same materials, white 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 319 

silk mits, and a large ring. When he entered the nave 
he stood and blessed the people, holding up two fingers. 
The music was fine. We heard the singing as it came 
nearer and nearer, but as soon as the Pope appeared the 
people broke into shouts, waving handkerchiefs, and 
making so much noise that we could no longer hear the 
music. We left after five hours." 

Later in the season those members of our party w4io 
remained in Rome while we were travelling through 
Egypt and Palestine, had very satisfactory views of King 
Edward VIL of England and William IL, the Emperor 
of Germany, on their visits to Rome. As they had seen 
the Prince of Wales in London, and young Prince Ed- 
ward, who will also be King of England some day if 
he lives, and the other royal children at Marlborough 
House, and as they have repeatedly seen King Victor 
Emmanuel and Queen Helena, they have had unusual 
opportunities for seeing for themselves whether the roy- 
alties are made of common clay. I must say for them 
that they are stauncher than ever in their devotion to 
the republican ideals of our own country. Their oppor- 
tunities for seeing these royalties were better than those 
enjoyed by most visitors to Rome, because their rooms 
overlooked the palace and grounds of the Queen mother, 
Marguerita, and King Edward and the Kaiser, like 
other royal visitors to Rome, made it their first business 
to call on her. She is still the most beloved woman in 
Italy. 
„ _ , The location of our rooms was advan- 

Our Quarters 

on the Pincian tagcous in many other respects. They were 

*^'"' high up in the southwestern corner of a 

tall building on the Pincian Hill, so high that we could 

look clear across the city to the Sabine Mountains. As 

soon as the sun rose over the eastern hills he looked 



320 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

cheerily into our windows, and continued his genial com- 
panionship with us till he sank into the Mediterranean 
at night. We had selected the rooms with a view to 
this particularly, remembering the Italian proverb that 
"When the sun goes out of the window, the doctor comes 
in at the door." A room on the north side of a building 
should never be taken. The Roman winter is short but 
sharp. We could see snow on the mountains during 
nearly the whole of our stay, which in the case of the 
majority of us was five months. Then, too, we were 
close to the city wall, and to the gate which led out 
into the lovely Borghese Gardens, "whose wooded and 
flowery lawns are more beautiful than the finest English 
park scenery," where "the stone pines lift their dense 
clumps of branches upon a slender length of stem, so 
high that they look like green islands in the air, flinging 
down a shadow upon the turf so far off that you scarcely 
know which tree made it" ; where there are "avenues of 
cypress, resembling dark flames of huge funeral candles, 
which spread dusk and twilight round about them, instead 
of cheerful radiance"; and where ancient and majestic 
ilex trees "lean over the green turf in ponderous grace. 
. . . Never was there a more venerable quietude than 
that which sleeps among their sheltering boughs; never 
a sweeter sunshine than that which gladdens the gentle 
gloom which these leafy patriarchs strive to diffuse over 
the swelling and subsiding lawns." Moreover, our quar- 
ters were within so short a walk of the park on the Pincio 
(where the band plays every afternoon, and where all 
Rome drives round and round the little circle at the top), 
and of the terrace of the Villa Medici, that we were 
drawn thither day after day to watch the picturesque 
groups of models lounging in the wintry sun on the great 
flight of steps that lead from the Church of Trinita de' 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 321 

Monti down to the Piazza di Spagna, to muse over the 
Eternal City spread out below us, with the dome of St. 
Peter's, in the distance, standing out against a sky of 
gold, and, above all, to watch "the light that broods over 
the fallen sun." Nowhere in the world, at least so far 
as my observation of it extends, is this wonderful glow 
which suffuses all the western sky with crimson, orange 
and violet lights after the sun goes down — nowhere else 
is this afterglow at once so rich and so delicate as at 
Rome. 

But it is from the Janiculan Hill, on the 
History Seen Other sldc of the Tiber, that one gets the 
from the most comprchensive view of the city. 

Among other things that take the eye from 
that commanding point there are three hills which may 
be said to epitomize the history of Rome : on the east 
the Palatine, where, as its name intimates, the palaces 
of the Caesar's stood, representing the culmination of the 
glory of pagan Rome; on the west, the Vatican, where, 
as its name suggests, a prophet ought to dwell, though 
1 fear he does not, and where St. Peter's, with its "inso- 
lent opulence of marble" and its colossal apotheosis of 
the popedom, represents the culmination of the glory of 
papal Rome ; and, immediately in front, in the centre of 
the city, the Quirinal, where Victor Emmanuel's royal 
house stands, representing the new government of free 
and united Italy. From his windows in the Quirinal 
Palace, the King can look across the intervening city to 
the windows of that other palace where the relentless foe 
of his government lives, that vast, luxurious "prison" of 
the Vatican, with its eleven thousand rooms, the largest 
palace in the world, with its museums and libraries filled 
with priceless treasures, and with its extensive gardens 
and grounds. 



322 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Zola has pointed out how persistent, through all these 
three periods of Rome's history, has been that passion 
for Cyclopean building, the "blossoming of that ancient 
sap, peculiar to the soil of Rome, which in all ages has 
thrown up preposterous edifices, of exaggerated hugeness 
and dazzling and ruinous luxury." First, the pagan em- 
perors set the pace, and of their work we may take the 
Colosseum and the Baths of Caracalla as specimens. 
^^ ^ , "The Colosseum. Ah! that colossus, only 

The Colosseum ' •' 

and the Baths ouc-half or SO of which has been destroyed 
of Caracalla. j^^ ^.j^^^ ^2 ^-jj^ ^j^^ strokc of a mighty 

scythe, it rises in its enormity and majesty like a stone 
lace-work, with hundreds of empty bays agape against 
the blue of heaven! There is a world of halls, stairs, 
landings and passages, a world where one loses one's 
self amid the death-like silence and solitude. The fur- 
rowed tiers of seats, eaten into by the atmosphere, are 
like shapeless steps leading down into some old extinct 
crater, some natural circus excavated by the force of the 
elements in indestructible rock. The hot suns of eighteen 
hundred years have baked and scorched this ruin, which 
has reverted to a state of nature, bare and golden-brown 
like a mountain side, since it has been stripped of its 
vegetation, the flora which once made it like a virgin 
forest. And what an evocation when the mind sets flesh 
and blood and life again on all that dead osseous frame- 
work, fills the circus with the ninety thousand spectators 
which it could hold, marshals the games and the combats 
of the arena, gathers a whole civilization together, from 
the emperor and the dignitaries to the surging plebeian 
sea, all aglow with the agitation and brilliancy of an 
impassioned people, assembled under the ruddy reflection 
of the giant purple velum. And then, yet further on the 
horizon, were other cyclopean ruins, the Baths of Cara- 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 323 

calla, standing there like relics of a race of giants long 
since vanished from the world: halls extravagantly and 
inexplicably spacious and lofty; vestibules large enough 
for an entire population ; a frigidarium, where five hun- 
dred people could swim together; a tepidarium and a 
calidarium on the same proportions, born of a wild crav- 
ing for the huge; and then the terrific massiveniess of 
the structures, the thickness of the piles of brick-work, 
such as no feudal castle ever knew ; and, in addition, the 
general immensity which makes passing visitors look like 
lost ants ; one wonders for what men, for what multi- 
tudes, this monstrous edifice was reared. To-day you 
would say a mass of rocks in the rough thrown from 
some height for building the abode of Titans." 

Then the Popes, when they came to power. 

The Papal . „ , , . \ , , , 

Passion for followcd this pagan example, moved by the 
Terrestrial same Spirit of conqucst, the same human 

Immortality. . , . , . 

vanity, the same passionate desire to set 
their names on imperishable walls, and, after dominating 
the world, to leave behind them indestructible traces, 
tangible proofs of their passing glory, eternal edifices of 
bronze and marble, to attest that glory till the end of 
time. "Among the illustrious popes there has not been 
one that did not seek to build, did not revert to the tra- 
ditions of the Caesars, eternizing their reigns in stone 
and raising temples for resting-places, so as to rank 
among the gods. Ever the same passion for terrestrial 
immortality has burst forth: it has been a battle as to 
who should leave the highest, most substantial, most gor- 
geous monument ; and so acute has been the disease that 
those who, for lack of means and opportunity, have been 
unable to build, and have been forced to content them- 
selves with repairing, have, nevertheless, desired to be- 
queath the memory of their modest achievements to sub- 



324 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

sequent generations by commemorative marble slabs en- 
graved with pompous inscriptions. These slabs are to 
be seen on every side; not a wall has ever been strength- 
ened but some pope has stamped it with his arms, not a 
ruin has been restored, not a palace repaired, not a foun- 
tain cleaned, but the reigning pope has signed the work 
with his Roman and pagan title of Tontifex Maximus.' ^ 
It is a haunting passion, a form of involuntary de- 
bauchery, the fated florescence of that compost of ruins, 
that dust of edifices whence new edifices are ever arising. 
And given the perversion with which the old Roman soil 
almost immediately tarnished the doctrines of Jesus, that 
resolute passion for domination, and that desire for ter- 
restrial glory which wrought the triumph of Catholicism 
in scorn of the humble and pure, the fraternal and simple 
ones of the primitive church, one may well ask whether 
Rome has ever been Christian at all." 

And, finally, the new government of Victor 

The Building ^ , . . , , ^ 

Boom under Emmauucl, for a time at least, was caught 
the New jji j-j^e same current, infected with the same 

mania for building that seems to exhale 
from the very soil of the Eternal City. As the popes 
had not become masters of Rome without feeling im- 
pelled to rebuild it in their passion to rule over the world, 
so young Italy, "yielding to the hereditary madness of 
universal domination, had in its turn sought to make the 
city larger than any other, erecting whole districts for 
people who never came." But, fortunately for Italy, the 
old idea was not unmixed with newer and better ones. 
Their first delirious outburst of huge building operations 
has been explained as "a legitimate explosion of the de- 

^ On the Appian Way, beyond the tomb of Cecilia Metella, a 
marble tablet has been placed, informing all men that here Pius 
IX. once at his lunch. 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 325 

light and the hopes of a young nation anxious to show 
its power. The question was to make Rome a modern 
capital worthy of a great kingdom, and before aught else 
there were sanitary requirements to be dealt with ; the 
city needed to be cleansed of all the filth which disgraced 
it. One cannot nowadays imagine in what abominable 
putrescence the City of the Popes, the Roma sporca which 
artists regret, was then steeped : the vast majority of the 
houses lacked even the most primitive arrangements, the 
public thoroughfares were used for all purposes, noble 
ruins served as store-places for sewage, the princely 
palaces were surrounded by filth, and the streets were 
perfect manure beds, which fostered frequent epidemics. 
Thus, vast municipal works were absolutely necessary; 
the question was one of health and life itself. And in 
much the same way it was only right to think of building 
houses for the new comers who would assuredly flock 
into the city. There had been a precedent at Berlin, 
whose population, after the establishment of the German 
Empire, had suddenly increased by some hundreds of 
thousands. In the same way the population of Rome 
would certainly be doubled, tripled, quadrupled, for, as 
the new centre of national life, the city would necessarily 
attract all the vis viva of the provinces. And at this 
thought pride stepped in ; the fallen government of the 
Vatican must be shown what Italy was capable of achiev- 
ing, what splendor she would bestow on the new and 
third Rome, which, by the magnificence of its thorough- 
fares and the multitude of its people, would far excel 
either the imperial or the papal city." We need not follow 
the melancholy story of this delusion. The boom had a 
disastrous collapse, and the city was left full of vast, pre- 
tentious, flimsy, deserted palaces. The best thing about 
them is that they are perishable. The lesson, happily, 



326 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

was not lost on the men of the new order in Italy, and 
they seem at last to have extricated themselves from the 
toils of that miasmatic megalo-'mania. The government 
is sane, sound, conservative, proceeding with care and 
deliberation in its upbuilding of the country, understand- 
ing the meaning of the proverb that "Rome was not built 
in a day/' and it has already given the country more 
security and prosperity than it has enjoyed for many, 
many centuries. If it can continue to maintain itself 
against the priests, there is undoubtedly a bright future 
before Italy. 

But can it maintain itself against the priests ? I think 
so. Yet a man would be blind indeed who could not 
see their number, power and activity. Rome swarms 
with them. Speaking of the incredible number of cas- 
socks that one encounters in the streets, Zola says : "Ah ! 
that ebb and flow; that ceaseless tide of black gowns 
and frocks of every hue! With their processions of stu- 
dents ever walking abroad, the seminaries of the different 
nations would alone suffice to drape and decorate the 
streets, for there are the French and the English all in 
black, the South Americans in black with blue sashes, 
the North Americans in black with red sashes, the Poles 
in black with green sashes, the Greeks in blue, the Ger- 
mans in red, the Scots in violet, the Romans in black or 
violet or purple, the Bohemians with chocolate sashes, 
the Irish with red lappets, the Spaniards with blue cords, 
to say nothing of all the others with broidery and bind- 
ings and buttons in a hundred different styles. And, in 
addition, there are the confraternities, the penitents, 
white, black, blue and gray, with sleeveless frocks and 
capes of different hue, gray, blue, black or white. And 
thus, even nowadays, papal Rome at times seems to resus- 
citate, and one can realize how tenaciously and vigorously 



THE ETERNAL CITY. 327 

she struggles on in order that she may not disappear in 
the cosmopolitan Rome of the new era," Yes, Italy will 
escape from the clutches of the papacy, but she will have 
to work. There must be no relaxation of vigilance or 
energy on her part — or on ours. For this multitude of 
young priests from every part of the world spells menace 
for other lands besides Italy. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 
The Two Types of Religion in Rome. 

ONLY three or four blocks from our hotel stands the 
Church of the Cappuccini, which contains one of 
the most gruesome sights in Rome, the celebrated ceme- 
tery of the Cappuccini monks, the soil of which was 
TheCappucini brought from Jerusalem. All Roman Cath- 
Cemetery. q\[q cemeteries have a peculiarly melancholy 
aspect. They have none of that gentle beauty which is 
so characteristic of our cemeteries, where the grass grows 
green under the open sky or great trees cast their peaceful 
shade over "God's acre." But this is the most weird and 
ghastly of them all. There are four recesses or chapels 
underneath the church, the pillars and pilasters of which 
are made of thigh-bones and skulls, the architectural 
ornaments being represented by the joints of the spine, 
and the more delicate tracery by the smaller bones of 
the human frame. "The summits of the arches are 
adorned with entire skeletons, looking as if they were 
wrought most skillfully in bas-relief. There is no possi- 
bility of describing how ugly and grotesque is the effect. 
. . . On some of the skulls there are inscriptions, 
purporting that such a monk, who formerly made use 
of that particular head-piece, died on such a day and 
year; but vastly the greater number are piled up undis- 
tinguishably into the architectural design. ... In the 
side walls of the vaults are niches where skeleton monks 
sit or stand, clad in the brown habits that they wore in 
life. . . . Yet let us give the cemetery the praise that 
it deserves. There is no disagreeable scent, such as might 



RELIGION IN ROME. 329 

have been expected from the decay of so many holy 
persons, in whatever odor of sanctity they may have 
taken their departure. The same number of living monks 
would not smell half so unexceptionably." So Haw- 
thorne says, and I have spared my readers the most dis- 
agreeable parts of his description. 

The allusion in his last sentence is one which is jus- 
tified by the olfactory organs of every visitor to Rome. 
The vices which were encouraged in the magnificent baths 
of the emperors, and which have given the word bagnio 
an evil signification the world over, "found their reaction 
in the impression of the early Christians that unclean- 
liness was a virtue, an impression which is retained by 
several of the monastic orders to the present day." We 
sometimes weary of the superabundant advertisements 
of the different kinds of soap in the advertising pages 
of our monthly magazines. But what a wholesome sign 
it is ! And what a difference it marks between us and 
the average Italian ! And what a field for their business 
would be opened to Mr. Pears and the rest if only the 
monks would adopt the view that "cleanliness is next to 
godliness," and that, therefore, soap might be regarded 
as a sort of means of grace ! 

Mark Twain once described what he would 

Some Differ- . . ,. x i i i j 

ences between Say, if he wcrc a uativc of Italy, and had 
America - heQTi ou a visit to the United States, and 
had come back to the Campagna for the 
purpose of telling his Italian countrymen what he had 
seen in America: "One hardly ever sees a minister of 
the gospel going around there in his bare feet, with a 
basket, begging for subsistence. In that country the 
preachers are not like our mendicant orders of friars — 
they have two or three suits of clothing, and they wash 
sometimes." ... "I saw common men and common 



330 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

women who could read ; I even saw small children of 
common country people reading from books; if I dared 
think you would believe it, I would say they could write, 
also. ... I saw real glass windows in the houses of 
even the commonest people. Some of the houses are not 
of stone, nor yet of bricks ; I solemnly swear they are 
made of wood. Houses there will take fire and burn, 
sometimes — actually burn entirely down, and not leave 
a single vestige behind. I could state that for a truth 
upon my death-bed. And, as a proof that the circum- 
stance is not rare, I aver that they have a thing which 
they call a fire-engine, which vomits forth great streams 
of water, and is kept always in readiness, by night and 
by day, to rush to houses that are burning. You would 
think one engine would be sufficient, but some great cities 
have a hundred ; they keep men hired, and pay them 
by the month to do nothing but put out fires. ^ ... In 
that singular country if a rich man dies a sinner, he is 
damned ; he cannot buy salvation with money for masses. 
There is really not much use in being rich there. Not 
much use as far as the other world is concerned, but 
much, very much, use as concerns this; because there, 
if a man be rich, he is very greatly honored, and can be- 
come a legislator, a governor, a general, a senator, no 
matter how ignorant an ass he is — just as in our beloved 
Italy the nobles hold all the great places, even though 
sometimes they are born noble idiots. There, if a man 
be rich, they give him costly presents, they ask him to 
feasts, they invite him to drink complicated beverages; 

^ Few things struck our boys so much as the non-occurrence 
of fires in Rome, and the absence of all apparatus for extin- 
guishing them, and on our return to America few things seemed 
so strange to us at first as the frame houses in the New Jersey 
towns along the Pennsylvania railroad. 



RELIGION IN ROME. 331 

but if he be pcwr and in debt, they require him to do that 
which they term to 'settle.' ... In that country you 
might fall from a third-story window three several times 
and not mash either a soldier or a priest. . . . Jews 
there are treated just like human beings, instead of dogs. 
. . . They never have had to run races naked through 
the public streets against jackasses to please the people 
in carnival time; there they never have been driven by 
the soldiers into a church every Sunday for hundreds 
of years to hear themselves and their religion especially 
and particularly cursed." ^ 

The Playful While I havc Mark Twain in hand, I will 

Inquisition, make two more quotations from him, and 
then dismiss him for good. Looking from the dome of 
St. Peter's upon the building which was once the In- 
quisition, he says : "How times are changed, between the 
older ages and the new ! Some seventeen or eighteen 
centuries ago, the ignorant men of Rome were wont to 
put Christians in the arena of the Coliseum yonder, and 
turn the wild beasts in upon them for a show. It was 
for a lesson as well. It was to teach the people to abhor 
and fear the new doctrine the followers of Christ were 
teaching. The beasts tore the victims limb from limb, 
and made poor mangled corpses of them in the twinkling 
of an eye. But when the Christians came into power, 
when the holy Mother Church became mistress of the 
barbarians, she taught them the error of their ways by 
no such means. No, she put them in this pleasant In- 
quisition, and pointed to the blessed Redeemer, who was 
so gentle and so merciful toward all men, and they urged 
the barbarians to love him; and they did all they could 

' This custom of compelling Jews to listen to Christian ser- 
mons was only abolished in 1848, under Pius IX., through the 
influence of Michelangelo Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta. 



332 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

to persuade them to love and honor him — first by twist- 
ing their thumbs out of joint with a screw; then by 
nipping their flesh with pincers — red-hot ones, because 
they are the most comfortable in cold weather; then by 
skinning them alive a little, and finally by roasting them 
in public. They always convinced those barbarians. The 
true religion, properly administered, as the good Mother 
Church used to administer it, is very, very soothing. It 
is wonderfully persuasive, also. There is a great differ- 
ence between feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring 
up their finer feelings in an Inquisition. One is the 
system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened, 
civilized people. It is a great pity the playful Inquisition 
is no more." 

Speaking of a mosaic group at the side of 

^'"Rfni^oTthe ^^^ S^^^^ ^^"^^ w^^^^ represents the Sav- 

Deities iour, St. Peter, Pope Leo, St. Silvester, 

hTRom'J'^*'* Constantine and Charlemagne, he says: 

"Peter is giving the pallium to the Pope, 

and a standard to Charlemagne. The Saviour is giving 

the keys to St. Silvester, and a standard to Constantine. 

No prayer is offered to the Saviour, who seems to be of 

little importance anywhere in Rome; but an inscription 

below says, 'Blessed Peter, give life to Pope Leo and 

victory to King Charles.' It does not say, 'Intercede for 

lis, through the Saviour, with the Father, for this boon,' 

but 'Blessed Peter, give it us.' 

"In all seriousness — without meaning to be frivolous, 
without meaning to be irreverent, and, more than all, 
without meaning to be blasphemous — I state, as my sim- 
ple deduction from the things I have seen and the things I 
have heard, that the Holy Personages rank thus in Rome : 
"First. 'The Mother of God' — otherwise the Virgin 
Mary. 



RELIGION IN ROME. 333 

"Second. The Deity. 

"Third. Peter. 

"Fourth. Some twelve or fifteen canonized popes and 
martyrs. 

"Fifth. Jesus Qirist the Saviour (but always an in- 
fant in arms). 

"I may be wrong in this — my judgment errs often, 
just as is the case with other men's — but it is my judg- 
ment, be it good or bad. 

"Just here I will mention something that seems curi- 
ous to me. There are no 'Christ's Churches' in Rome, 
and no 'Churches of the Holy Ghost,' that I can discover. 
There are some four hundred churches, but about a fourth 
of them seem to be named for the Madonna and St. Peter. 
There are so many named for Mary that they have to 
be distinguished by all sorts of affixes, if I understand 
the matter rightly. Then we have churches of St. Louis, 
St. Augustine, St. Agnes, St. Calixtus, St. Lorenzo in 
Lucina, St. Lorenzo in Damaso, St. Cecilia, St. Athana- 
sius, St. Philip Neri, St. Catherine, St. Dominico, and a 
multitude of lesser saints whose names are not familiar 
in the world — and away down, clear out of the list of 
the churches, comes a couple of hospitals; one of them 
is named for the Saviour and the other for the Holy 
Ghost!" 

But we have allowed this clean, shrewd, 
The Fee of the j-^cy American, with his biting satire and 

Visitor more , . i i r 

Important his outspoken common sense, to lead us far 
than the away from our subject. Let us come back 

Soul of the , r^, t ,• , ^ . • T- 1 

Worshipper. to the Church of the Cappuccmi. For, be- 
sides its horrible cemetery, it contains an- 
other object of great interest, though of a very different 
character, viz., Guido's great picture of the Archangel 
Michael trampling upon the devil. The devil's face is 



334 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

said to be a portrait of Pope Innocent X., against whom 
the painter had a spite. It is not for the purpose of de- 
scribing the picture that I refer to it, for I am not com- 
petent to do that, but for the purpose of quoting the 
animadversions of another American writer upon the cus- 
tom of concealing this picture and others of special 
interest in Romish churches with closely drawn curtains, 
requiring the presence of an attendant to unveil them 
and the bestowment of a fee by the visitor. "The church- 
men of Italy make no scruple of sacrificing the very pur- 
pose for which a work of sacred art has been created, that 
of opening the way for religious sentiment through the 
quick medium of sight, by bringing angels, saints and 
martyrs down visibly upon earth — of sacrificing this 
high purpose, and, for aught they know, the welfare of 
many souls along with it, to the hope of a paltry fee. 
Every work by an artist of celebrity is hidden behind a 
veil, and seldom revealed, except to Protestants, who 
scorn it as an object of devotion, and value it only for its 
artistic merit." 

The same author (Hawthorne), speaking 

Sensuality . , .,,,,. . , , . 

versus of the tcmble lack of variety in the subjects 

Spirituality q{ ^[^q great Italian masters, says a quarter 
part, probably, of any large collection of 
pictures consists of Virgins and infant Christs. . . . 
Half of the other pictures are Magdalens, Flights into 
Eg}pt, Crucifixions, etc. "The remainder of the gallery 
comprises mythological subjects, such as nude Venuses, 
Ledas, Graces, and, in short, a general apotheosis of 
nudity. . . . These impure pictures are from the same 
illustrious and impious hands that adventured to call 
before us the august forms of apostles and saints, the 
Blessed Mother of the Redeemer, and her Son, at his 
deatli, and in his glory, and even the aw fulness of him 



RELIGION IN ROME. 335 

to whom the martyrs, dead a thousand years ago, have 
not dared to raise their eyes. They seem to take up one 
task or the other — the disrobed woman whom they call 
Venus, or the type of highest and tenderest womanhood 
in the mother of the Saviour — with equal readiness, but 
to achieve the former with far more satisfactory success. 
If an artist sometimes produced a picture of the Virgin 
possessing warmth enough to excite devotional feelings, 
it was probably the object of his earthly love, to whom he 
thus paid the stupendous and fearful homage of setting 
up her portrait to be worshipped, not figuratively as a 
mortal, but by religious souls in their earnest aspirations 
towards divinity. And who can trust the religious senti- 
ment of Raphael, or receive any of his Virgins as heaven- 
descended likenesses, after seeing, for example, the "For- 
narina" of the Barberini Palace, and feeling how sensual 
the artist must have been to paint such a brazen trollop 
of his own accord, and lovingly? Would the Blessed 
Mary reveal herself to his spiritual vision, and favor him 
with sittings alternately with that type of glowing earth- 
liness, the Fornarina?" 

The Kind of Truc, Hawthome proceeds at once to 
Character weaken the force of this criticism somewhat 
Produced. ^^^ referring to the throng of spiritual faces, 
innocent cherubs, serene angels, pure-eyed madonnas, 
and "that divinest countenance in the Transfiguration" — 
all of which we owe to Raphael's marvellous brush. But 
the criticism above quoted is sound. And that Hawthorne 
himself saw how little such "sacred art" had availed to 
lift the representatives of this kind or worship out of 
gross sensualism, let the following passage witness: 
"Here was a priesthood, pampered, sensual, with red and 
bloated cheeks, and carnal eyes. With apparently a 
grosser development of animal life than most men, they 



336 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

were placed in an unnatural relation with woman, and 
thereby lost the healthy, human conscience that pertains 
to other human beings, who own the sweet household 
ties connecting them with wife and daughter. And here 
was an indolent nobility, with no high aims or oppor- 
tunities, but cultivating a vicious way of life, as if it 
were an art, and the only one which they cared to learn. 
Here was a population, high and low, that had no genuine 
belief in virtue ; and if they recognized any act as crimi- 
nal, they might throw off all care, remorse and memory 
of it, by kneeling a little while at the confessional, and 
rising unburdened, active, elastic and incited by fresh 
appetite for the next ensuing sin." 

Of course all the priests are not such as above de- 
scribed, as Eugene Sue has endeavored to show in the 
character of Gabriel in The Wandering lew, and Victor 
Hugo in the character of the good bishop in Les Misera- 
hles, and Marie Corelli in the character of the good Car- 
dinal Bonpre in The Master Christian. Hawthorne sim- 
ply describes the prevailing type. Let it be observed, 
too, that he is speaking of the priests in Italy, not of those 
in America, among whom we are glad to believe there 
is a much larger proportion of good men. Moreover, it 
should not be forgotten that the present Premier of Italy 
has himself stated publicly, in a passage which I have 
quoted in Chapter XXIX., that there has been some im- 
provement, at least in the outward conduct of the clergy, 
since the overthrow of the papal government, and that the 
immorality of the priests and cardinals is not so shame- 
lessly flaunted in Rome as it used to be under the popes. 
On the 20th of September. 1870, the Italian 

The Other Type. , _ . ,. , 

army entered Rome, after a shsfht resist- 
ance. This event, which marked the downfall of the 
temporal power of the papacy, the unification of Italy, 



RELIGION IN ROME. 337 

and the establishment of religious liberty under the en- 
lightened and progressive government of Victor Em- 
manuel, is properly commemorated in the name of a hand- 
some street, Via Venti Settembre, which extends from 
the Porta Pia, where the army entered, to the Quirinal 
Palace, where the King resides. Appropriately placed on 
a street which thus commemorates the establishment of 
civil and religious freedom in Italy, are several of the 
Protestant churches, which for the last thirty years have 
caused a pure river of water of life to flow once more 
through Rome as in the days when the great Apostle 
of the Gentiles preached there the kingdom of God, and 
taught the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with 
all boldness, none forbidding him. 

At No. 7 on this high and pleasant street we find a 
tall, clean, handsome building, standing well back from 
the street, with a spacious, green yard in front, the whole 
occupying a portion of what were once the gardens of 
the Barberini Palace. A neat notice-board on the high 
iron picket fence informs us that this attractive building 
is the Presbyterian Church, and that the pastor is the 
Rev. J. Gordon Gray, D. D. 
» . ... When you enter the church on Sunday 

An Apostolic -' _ •' 

Preacher moming, a fcw miuutcs before eleven 
in Rome. o'clock, you find it filled with a congregation 
of exceptionally intelligent people, mostly English-speak- 
ing residents in Rome and English-speaking visitors from 
every part of the world, including many Christians of 
other denominations besides our own — for it does not 
take visitors in Rome long to find out how strong and 
wholesome is the spiritual nourishment here furnished, 
how broad-minded and large-hearted the minister is, and 
how surely he declares the whole counsel of God, without 
ever a syllable that can offend any of those who love 



338 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. If you return in the 
afternoon, as you will do if you are wise, and as every- 
body does, in fact, after hearing him once, you will find 
the house full again, and, while you will see no splendid 
pageant, no rows of bishops and archbishops in purple 
and lace and furs, no robing and disrobing, no intoned 
service in Latin, no choral responses from high and gilded 
choir loft, no clouds of incense filling the air — you will 
hear the old sweet gospel in all its pristine purity — you 
will see the great apostle and his friends before you, in- 
stinct with life and love and zeal, as the minister lectures, 
with astonishing fullness and accuracy of information 
and sympathetic understanding, on Roman Sites which 
can be identified with St. Paul's Sojourn Here, The Saints 
of Caesar's Household in the light of the Columbaria, 
The Site and probable incidents of Paul's Roman Trial, 
The First Martyrdoms and the probable Site of Nero's 
Circus, Paul's Two Years in his Hired House, Paul's 
Travels and Labors between his First and Second Roman 
Imprisonments, The Closing Years of Paul's Ministry, 
The Jews in Rome in Paul's Time — and you will hear 
things that make for the peace of your soul and for your 
upbuilding on your most holy faith as he expounds The 
Chief Elements of Paul's Teaching; Christ in Early 
Christian Art as found in the Roman Catacombs ; The 
State after Death, Prayers to the Dead, and Prayers for 
the Dead, in the light of the testimony of the Roman 
Catacombs ; The Place and Efficacy of the Sacraments in 
the light of the testimony of the Roman Catacombs ; and 
The Ministry in the Early Church of the Catacombs. 
A Wise and Surcly ncvcr was Christian workman better 

Loving Pastor, adapted to his work than Dr. Gray. The 
sturdy frame, the massive head, the clear eye, the kindly 
voice, the genial manner, the transparent sincerity, and 



RELIGION IN ROME. 339 

the ready sympathy of the man, invite one's confidence 
from the first, and the longer you know him the more you 
value him for his rare combination of strength and ten- 
derness, and for his wisdom, piety and learning. We had 
the good fortune to hear his sermon on the eighteenth 
anniversary of the formation of his pastorate in Rome, 
in which he reviewed the history of his church during 
those eighteen years, and the years immediately preceding, 
and the growth of Protestantism in Rome since the down- 
fall of the papacy — and a deeply interesting discourse 
it was. It lifted one's hopes for the future of Italy. 
Undoubtedly the day is breaking over the darkness which 
has so long lain like a pall over this lovely land. 

A good man is known by his prayers. There is a 
fullness, propriety and fervor about Dr. Gray's public 
prayers that are seldom equalled. The homesick stranger, 
with the wide ocean between him and his native land — 
the professional man wavering in health and doubtful 
as to the future — the stricken widow, who has lost her 
husband by the sudden stroke of death — as well as those 
who bear the usual burdens of the human heart, find 
themselves strangely comforted and cheered, strangely 
relieved of their toils and cares and anxieties and fears, 
strangely upborne and strengthened, as this man of God 
pours from a sympathetic heart the needs of his people 
into the ear of him who careth for us. Among the usual 
petitions on Sunday morning there is invariably one for 
the King of England and the royal family, the President 
of the United States, and the King and Queen of Italy. 
We had two reminders on the 22nd of February that it 
was Washington's birthday : one was the flags hanging 
out at the American Embassy, and the other was Dr. 
Gray's prayer of thanksgiving for the character and ser- 
vices of Washington. He never forgets anything. 



340 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

Yet his activities are multifarious. His resourceful- 
ness, adequacy and strength have long since made him 
the real dean of the fine force of Protestant ministers in 
Rome. His advice is sought by them, and by all manner 
of visitors to Rome, on all manner of subjects. He is 
deeply interested in the matter of excavating the house 
of Priscilla and Aquila, the Apostle Paul's friends, on the 
Aventine, and hopes to raise the necessary funds and have 
that done — a valuable service to archaeological and bibli- 
cal learning. He ought by all means to be allowed to 
find time to publish a volume on The Apostle Paul in 
Rome. Dr. Gray is another of the many good gifts of 
Scotland to the world, and, like Dr. Alexander Whyte, 
of Edinburgh, and other eminent Scotchmen, is an Aber- 
deen man. They are some of the Aberdonians who almost 
tempt us at times to agree with the Aberdeen man of 
whom our good Scotch physician in Rome told me the 
other day, who said, "Tak' awa' Aberdeen and sax miles 
around it, and whgt would you have left?" 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 
The Inexhaustibleness of Rome. 

ROME is easily the most interesting city in the world. 
The subject is simply inexhaustible. Ampere said 
that by diligence one could obtain a superficial knowledge 
of it in ten years. Just what terms should be used to 
characterize the seventy pages or so that I have written, 
from the basis of the desultory reading and observation 
of only a few months, I must leave to the decision of the 
reader. "Presumptuous sciolism," perhaps. And, yet, 
though I have filled these seventy pages with what I 
regarded as pertinent descriptions, salient facts and sug- 
gestive quotations from the best authorities, all subjected 
to as much compression as was consistent with a fair 
statement of the particular points which I wished to make, 
I have restricted myself almost exclusively to one phase 
of the subject, viz., Ecclesiastical Rome, and have had 
almost nothing to say of Classical Rome and Artistic 
Rome. 

Even when confining myself to this one line, I have 
found no opportunity to give you any description of the 
Appian Way, over the paving-stones of which the Apostle 
Paul entered Rome in 56 A. D. (Acts xxviii. 14-16); 
or of the Pyramid of Cestius, still standing beside the 
road, just outside the gate which now bears the apostle's 
name — a sepulchral monument upon which his eyes must 
have rested for a moment as he passed out to his own 
execution — "Among the works of man, that pyramid is 
the only surviving witness of the martyrdom of St. Paul" ; 
or of the Catacombs, those vast labyrinths of subterranean 



342 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

galleries, the aggregate length of which is estimated at 
nearly six hundred miles, so that if placed end to end 
they would extend the whole length of Italy — where the 
bodies of thousands of the early Christians were laid in 
full hope of the resurrection ; or of the bronze statue of 
St. Peter in the great cathedral, the extended foot of 
which has been largely worn away by the kisses of Roman 
Catholic devotees — the figure which, on the occasion of 
Pope Leo's Jubilee, our party saw dressed up in a mitre 
and pontifical robes; or of Houdon's marvellous statue 
of St. Bruno in the Church of St. Maria degli Angeli, 
of which Clement XIV., the Pope who is supposed to 
have died of poison administered by the Jesuits, in 1774, 
used to say, "He would speak, if the rule of his order 
did not forbid it"; or of the statue of that other Bruno 
who now stands in the Campo de' Fiori, on the spot 
where he was burnt as a heretic in 1600 for his advocacy 
of the Copernican system. 

I have been able to say nothing of the remains of 
Classical Rome, such as the palaces of the Caesars, the 
Arch of Titus — with its bas-reliefs of the golden candle- 
stick and other treasures from the Temple at Jerusalem, 
which were borne among the spoils of that Emperor's 
triumph — the monuments of the Forum, the Column of 
Trajan, the tomb of Hadrian, the much lauded equestrian 
statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitoline Hill, the 
immensely impressive Pantheon, and the majestic statue 
of Pompey, at the foot of which Julius Csesar was assassi- 
nated. 

I have not been able even to mention such master- 
pieces of sculpture as the Dancing Faun, the Dying Gaul 
— "butchered to make a Roman holiday" — the Laocoon, 
the Apollo Belvedere, the Young Augustus, and scores 
of others, or such paintings as Guide's "Aurora," Michel- 



THE INEXHAUSTIBLENESS OF ROME. 343 

angelo's "Last Judgment," and the scarcely less wonder- 
ful creations of Botticelli, Titian and Domenichino. 

I have had to pass unnoticed such tempting details as 
the Tarpeian Rock, the site of the bridge which Horatius 
kept in the brave days of old, the walls of the Paeda- 
gogium under the Palatine cliff, where a school boy had 
drawn, for the encouragement of his successors, a sketch 
of an ass turning a corn-mill, with the superscription in 
Latin, "Work, little donkey, as I have worked, and it 
will profit thee" ; the famous Keyhole View of St. Peter's 
from the Aventine, and many others, for which I must 
refer you to other books. 

The Best Books Bcsides the books on Rome, such as Hare's 
about Rome. Walks, and Hawthorne's Marble Faun, to 
which I have tried to introduce my readers by appetizing 
quotations from time to time in former letters, I must 
mention also Dennie's Pagan Rome, Story's Roha di 
Roma, Mrs. Ward's Eleanor (which contains the best 
descriptions of the wonderful scenery around Lake 
Nemi), and the standard works of Professor Lanciani. 
These are much better for home reading, and even for 
reading on the spot, than the guide books. In a sumptu- 
ously bound and profusely illustrated copy of Lanciani's 
Nezv Tales of Old Rome, which was presented to me 
by a friend last Christmas, I find a criticism of the well- 
known passage in which Lord Mahon refers to the fact 
that the last of the Stuarts, the Old Pretender, his wife, 
and his two sons, are buried in St. Peter's, and where. 
Lord Mahon says, "a stately monument from the chisel 
of Canova has since risen to the memory of James HL, 
Charles HL, and Henry IX., kings of England, names 
which an Englishman can scarcely read without a smile 
or a sigh." Lanciani says, "Lord Mahon could have 
saved both his smiles and his sighs if he had simply 



344 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

read with care the epitaph engraved on the monument, 
which says: 'To James III., son of James II., King of 
Great Britain, to Charles Edward, and Henry, Dean of 
the Sacred College, Sons of James III., the last of the 
Royal House of Stuart.' " This is the only statement, 
so far as I have observed, in Professor Lanciani's writ- 
ings which is not scrupulously fair. That the criticism 
is not perfectly fair is clear from the very inscription 
which he cites, where the Old Pretender is twice called 
James HI. ; from the inscription on the tomb of his wife, 
close at hand, where she is called "Queen of Great Britain, 
France and Ireland" ; from the fact that the canopy under 
which the body of the Old Pretender lay in state at Rome 
for five days, crowned, sceptred, and in royal robes, was 
inscribed, "j^-cobus, Magnae Britannise Rex, Anno 
MDCCLXVL"; and from the fact, stated by Lanciani 
himself in the same volume, that when Charles Edward, 
the Young Pretender, died, Cardinal York, his brother, 
proclaimed himself the legitimate sovereign of Great 
Britain and Ireland, under the name of Henry IX. Lord 
Mahon was substantially correct. 

St. Peter's is a peculiarly appropriate place of sepul- 
ture for the line of tyrannical kings who tried so hard 
to fasten the yoke of Romanism upon Great Britain. 
They went to their own place. England and Scotland 
will do well to remember that the same forces which the 
Stuarts represented, and which endangered their liberties 
then, still constitute the gravest menace to the true free- 
dom of their island empire. 

One other book I must mention before finishing what 
I have to say about the literature of this vast subject: 
the volume entitled Ave Roma Immortalis, by Francis 
Marion Crawford, son of the sculptor to whom we are 
indebted for the superb equestrian statue of Washington 



THE INEXHAUSTIBLENESS OF ROME. 345 

at Richmond, with its circle of illustrious Virginians in 
bronze. Let no one be deterred by the Latin title. The 
book itself is written in the most delightful English. It 
is not to be commended without qualification, for this 
prolific author who bears the name of the immortal 
Huguenot partisan of South Carolina, and ought by 
every consideration, so far as we know, to be a stuidy 
Protestant, has suffered somewhat in his religious faith 
by his Italian birth and rearing. But his book is full 
of good things culled from wide and discriminating read- 
ing, the feature that is really of most value in a book 
of travel. 

But I must not forget that, while there is no limit to 
such a subject as Rome, there is a limit to the patience 
of my readers. So we will now take leave of Rome 
abruptly, and pass at once to Naples and its environs, 
where we spent the concluding days of our sojourn in 
Italy. 



23 



CHAPTER XXXV. 
Naples, Capri, Vesuvius, Amalfi and Pompeii. 

NAPLES is the largest, dirtiest and most beautiful 
city in Italy. From the balconies of our hotel, 
which stands high on the thickly-built hillside, we have 
a matchless view — the cream-colored city at our feet, 
with its red roofs and blue domes, rising from the water's 
edge and climbing the embayed mountain like half of 
a vast amphitheatre; the volcano of Vesuvius beyond, 
lifting its white plume of warning smoke by day, and 
sometimes glaring red at night ; the brown ruins of over- 
whelmed but disentombed Pompeii a little to the right; 
then the clififs of Sorrento; and, stretching between us 
and them, the bay itself, with its incomparable crescent 
of contiguous cities running like a fringe of snow round 
its blue waters. There — 

"The bridegroom Sea is-toying with the shore, 
His wedded bride ; and in the fullness of his marriage joy 

He decorates her tawny brow with shells, 
Retires a space to see how fair she looks, 
Then proud runs up to kiss her." 

The contrast between the heavenly scenery of this bay 
and that awful volcano, which stands over it like an ever- 
present threat of destruction, reminds one of the cherubim 
which stood at the gate of Eden to guarantee the restora- 
tion of redeemed and glorified humanity to communion 
with God, along with the self-revolving sword which sym- 
bolized the certainty and terribleness of divine vengeance 
upon sin. But neither by the promises of his grace nor 
by the threat of his vengeance do these people seem to 



NAPLES — VESUVIUS — POMPEII. 347 

be restrained from sin. Many of them are sunk in vice, 
street Scenes The contrast between splendor and squalor, 
in Naples. superfluous Wealth and abject poverty, 
which characterizes all large cities, is sharper, if possible, 
here than anywhere else. But it is the latter, the pic- 
turesque misery of Naples, that makes most impression 
upon the visitor. Some of the narrow streets, often not 
more than ten or twenty feet wide, are indescribably 
filthy, and they swarm with bare-headed, untidy women 
and half-naked children, yelling hucksters and pertina- 
cious beggars, dirty monks and gowned priests. All 
this, and more which cannot here be set down, in one of 
the loveliest places on this beautiful earth. 

An observant and witty friend of mine says: "The 
people live outdoors, and for the best of reasons — they 
would die indoors. . . . Into most of the living rooms 
on their narrowest streets the sun never shines. . . . 
At the best, the ordinary buildings feel sepulchral, and 
an overcoat is to be worn here in the house, and not on 
the streets ! Lining the sides of many, if not most of the 
streets, are shops or booths. They are, as far as one 
can see, single rooms, furnished about the door with 
vegetables, or meats, or maccaroni, or wine bottles, or 
charcoal, or bread, the rest of the room filled with beds 
and tables and dressers, with dishes and food, and shrines 
and highly-colored chromos of the saints and apostles. 
The children are washed and dressed in the doorways, 
and their heads constantly watched and investigated, 
much after the friendly fashion of monkeys. By the way, 
peddlers are forever thrusting small boxes of combs into 
our faces, insisting upon our buying. We have not pur- 
chased any yet — but who can tell ? The people do much 
of their cooking in small braziers outside the doors, on 
the sidewalk, burning charcoal and fanning the fires with 



348 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

hats or aprons. They have no hesitancy about eating 
out of the same dish and in the public eye. Cows and 
goats are driven along the street and milked at the doors 
into glasses or bottles, which seems a fair guarantee for 
the milk being fresh. The calves and kids come to town, 
too, and take in the ways of the city, along with what 
they get of their mothers' milk. Women wash clothes 
at the public fountains, some bringing wash-boards or 
flat stones, some treading the clothes in tubs with their 
feet. From windows and balconies, on lines stretched 
along the streets and on cane poles that almost touch the 
opposite houses, the wet things drip and dry. Squads 
of soldiers in various uniforms pass and repass at all times 
of day ; old women knit and rest in the doorways ; vege- 
table and fish venders proclaim their wares in high, hard 
voices. At their cries baskets are let down from upper 
windows, and the sharpest bargains in the shrillest accents 
are driven in midair. If the goods are not satisfactory, 
down go the baskets to the sidewalk." 

Of course we visited the aquarium, said to be the 
finest in the world, and the museum, with its two thou- 
sand mural paintings brought from Pompeii, and its 
collection df ancient bronzes — also the finest in the 
world. 

But the things that interested us most were not in 
Naples, but around it — such as Puteoli, where, many 
centuries ago, on a balmy spring day like this, when the 
south wind was blowing softly over the sea, the Apostle 
Paul landed, with Luke and Aristarchus, on his way to 
Rome; and where the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter 
Serapis, bearing sea-marks at various levels and having 
its columns perforated by lithodomites and containing 
imbedded shells, shows how the building, by gradual 
subsidence of the land, was first let down into the water, 



NAPLES — VESUVIUS — POMPEII. 349 

and then by volcanic upheaval lifted again to the higher 
level. 

The Blue Grotto Directly in front of us as we look from our 
at Capri. wiudows, but far out over the expanse of 
sunlit water, twenty-two miles away, we can see Capri, 
lying like a turquoise gem on the bosom of the bay. Our 
party returned from their visit to this enchanting island 
with quite new conceptions of the color effects that may 
be produced by the combination of sunlight and sea 
water. When the steamer stops at Capri, a short distance 
beyond the town of Capri, the passengers get into small 
boats and are rowed up to a lofty cliff, in the base of 
which, at the water level, there is a small hole, four feet 
high and four feet wide, so small, indeed, that it cannot 
be entered at all when the tide is up or the water is rough. 
Even under favorable conditions, passengers have to sit 
on the bottom of the boat and duck their heads. This 
is the entrance to the wonderful Blue Grotto. "Once 
within, you find yourself in an arched cavern about one 
hundred and sixty feet long, one hundred and twenty 
wide, and about seventy high. How deep it is no man 
knows. It goes down to the bottom of the ocean. The 
waters of this placid subterranean lake are the brightest, 
loveliest blue that can be imagined. They are as trans- 
parent as plate glass, and their coloring would shame the 
richest sky that ever bent over Italy. No tint could be 
more ravishing, no lustre more superb. Throw a stone 
into the water, and the myriad of tiny bubbles that are 
created flash out a brilliant glare like blue theatrical fires. 
Dip an oar, and its blade turns to frosted silver, tinted 
with blue. Let a man jump in, and instantly he is cased 
in an armor more gorgeous than ever kingly crusader 
wore." Two boys, in the scantiest possible attire, who 
were standing on a ledge when we entered, clothed them- 



350 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

selves repeatedly in this celestial armor for our delectation 
and their profit, by diving for the pennies flung into the 
water by the passengers. 
The Ascent of When you visit Vesuvius, make an early 
Vesuvius. start and give yourself plenty of time. It 
took our party four hours and a half, with a good team, 
to drive from Naples to the foot of the steep cone at 
the top. The journey takes you through some of the 
disagreeable parts of the city and gives you a new im- 
pression of its extent. When at last you do turn from 
the squalid streets and begin the ascent of the mountain, 
your enjoyment begins. The fresh breeze, laden with 
the fragrance of orange blossoms, tempers the heat, and 
at every turn of the winding, climbing road you have the 
most entrancing views of the city and the bay. The 
mountain itself is partly covered with the luxuriant 
greenery of orchards and villas, and partly by the gloomy 
beds of lava thrown out by successive eruptions — "a. 
black ocean, which was tumbled into a thousand fantastic 
shapes — a wild chaos of ruin, desolation and barren- 
ness — a wilderness of billowy upheavals, of furious 
whirlpools, of miniature mountains rent asunder — of 
gnarled and knotted, wrinkled and twisted masses of 
blackness that mimicked branching roots, great vines, 
trunks of trees all interlaced and mingled together ; and 
all these weird shapes, all this turbulent panorama, all 
this stormy, far stretching waste of blackness, with its 
thrilling suggestiveness of life, of action, of boiling, surg- 
ing, furious motion, was petrified ! — all stricken dead 
and cold in the instant of its maddest rioting ! — fettered, 
paralyzed and left to glower at heaven in impotent rage 
for evermore !" 

I had had the good fortune on a former visit to see 
the process of its formation. At that time the lava was 



NAPLES — VESUVIUS — POMPEII. 35 1 

actually flowing from a breach in the side of the moun- 
tain, a little below the cone which surrounds the great 
crater, and a party of us walked over a half mile or so 
among the wild rocks and congealed lava to get a sight 
of it. The rocks over which we walked were too hot to 
touch with the naked hand, and scorched the bottoms 
of our shoes. The fumes of sulphur escaping through 
the crevices made the air almost suffocating. These con- 
ditions became more aggravated the nearer we came to 
the object of our search, so that one or two of the party 
became quite unnerved, gave up the expedition, and re- 
turned. We felt like we were walking in a furnace. Then 
the guide made a turn round some great boulders, and 
there it was — a slowly moving stream of liquid fire, 
issuing from under a great rock, and flowing down the 
side of the mountain. Every one threw his hands before 
his face to protect it from the blistering heat. The guide, 
standing behind a big rock, reached over with a long pole 
into this fearful red river and lifted out a glob of the 
molten lava on the end of it, as you would dip up a bit 
of hot molasses candy on the end of a fork, then, with- 
drawing a little way, he disengaged the lava from the 
end of the pole with a smaller stick, and, asking me for a 
penny, he laid the coin on the lump of lava and pressed 
it well down into the mass which rose round the edges 
of the coin, holding it firmly in its place — and thus 
made for me a paper weight, which is my best souvenir 
of Vesuvius. 

The ascent of the cone to the crater is next thing to 
trying to climb a church steeple. Thanks to the enter- 
prise of Thomas Cook & Sons, there is an inclined railway 
which takes you from the foot of the cone up the steep 
breast of the mountain nearly to the top — a dizzy ride, 
one that makes you shut your eyes and grip the arms of 



352 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

your seat. Then comes the worst of it — the final climb 
through warm cinders ankle deep, which furnish very 
bad footing and come over your shoe tops at every step. 
There are rude sedan chairs on poles, and chair-bearers 
who will gladly carry you up for an additional fee — and 
there are often ludicrous scenes when timid ladies essay 
this mode of ascent. The distance is very short, so the 
ladies of our party determined to climb it themselves, 
but, when about half way up, they were glad enough 
to take hold of the looped ends of ropes while men at the 
other end pulled, and so at last they stood on the very 
top of the great volcano. Not for long, however, for, 
after they had walked round the edge of the great crater 
and gotten a view of the new crater, formed within, and 
looking like the heaped hole of a gigantic "doodle bug," 
with its slopes made of cinders instead of sand, and 
sprinkled with orange-colored sulphur, the wind veered 
suddenly and swept the stifling sulphur fumes right into 
their faces. They ran, coughing, back over the cinders 
and down again to the upper station of the railway, fully 
convinced that Vesuvius, though not perhaps so impres- 
sive, was decidedly more pleasant at a distance than at 
such close range. 

The Loveliness Perhaps the most beautiful drive in the 
ofAmaifi. world IS the drive from Castellamare to 
Amalfi, Castellamare is about an hour and a half by rail 
from Naples, and not far from Pompeii. It was here, 
indeed, that the elder Pliny lost his life in the eruption 
of 79 A. D., which destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. 
Taking a wagonette there about the middle of the day, 
we followed this magnificent road nearly all the after- 
noon, as it wound in and out along the mountainside, 
with the towering cliffs on one hand and the intensely 
blue bay on the other, seen ever and anon through open- 



NAPLES — VESUVIUS — POMPEII. 353 

ings between the silvery olive trfies which clothed all the 
slopes, the view backwards being terminated by the ma- 
jestic uplift of Vesuvius, wearing a soft plum-colored 
tinge that we had never seen it have before. The soil 
here is wonderfully fertile, and every hillside is terraced 
and cultivated with the utmost care. The orange and 
lemon groves, with the trees trained over trellises and 
protected from too intense heat by straw, laid on frames 
above, were still blooming, though the trees were heavily 
laden with green and golden fruit. Every now and then 
little boys and girls from the villages which are perched 
on the rocks or cling to the hillsides would run after us, 
throwing nosegays into the carriage and expecting "soldi" 
in return. After a while the scenery became more rugged, 
not unlike Switzerland, with little waterfalls trickling 
down the cliffs, and Scotch broom and other wild plants 
taking the place of the vineyards and orchards on the 
towering rocks. And now we begin to drive through 
tunnels cut through the cliffs and to pass over solid stone 
bridges, spanning glorious ravines at a dizzy height, with 
the transparent sea making in far below us, and the 
mountains of gray rock towering skyward above us. And 
at last, in the soft evening light, we reached the culmina- 
tion of all this wonderful beauty at Amalfi. When we 
stopped at the foot of the cliff on which the Cappuccini 
Hotel stands, overlooking the town and the sea, we found 
the uniformed portiere and other attendants in a little 
lodge or office at the bottom of a long, zigzag flight of 
stone steps, which leads up to the high perched hotel. 
But there were sedan chairs and chair-bearers to spare 
the ladies and the youngest of the children the long, lung- 
taxing climb, and we were soon comfortably installed in 
the most romantically situated hotel I have ever seen. 
It was a Cappucin monastery once, and the cloisters are 



354 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

still there, but the cells are now used as bed-rooms. From 
the windows and balconies, and from the long and lovely 
arcade, covered with grape vines and lined with the most 
beautiful marguerites, lilies, roses and geraniums, the 
guests look down upon the picturesque little city, the 
boats drawn up on the beach, the burnished Mediter- 
ranean, and the opaline islands in the offing. And how 
we Protestants did sleep in the comfortably furnished 
cells of those ousted monks ! Amalfi is the place I wish 
to come to if I am ever again in Italy. 
The Ruins When wc torc ourselves away from Amalfi, 

ofPompeii. wc drovc ou around by Salerno, another 
feast of beauty, and took the train at La Cava for Pom- 
peii. For days we had been reading, or re-reading, Bul- 
wer's Last Days of Pompeii with breathless interest, or 
plodding through the dryer, but hardly more accurate, 
details of the guide book — we had been to the museum 
at Naples, where the mural paintings and other disen- 
tombed relics of the city are shown, and we had stood 
on the crater of the volcano that wrought its destruction 
— so that we came to the exhumed ruins with as thorough 
preparation as we had found it possible to make. But 
what description can prepare one for the impression of 
that appalling catastrophe which one receives when he 
stands in the midst of the ruins themselves, and sees how 
sudden and terrible the overthrow was? 

Pompeii had been shattered by an earthquake sixteen 
years before the final catastrophe, but the warning had 
been disregarded. The place was rebuilt with lavish 
outlay, and embellished with all the resources of contem- 
porary art, so that it was a new and splendid city which 
was buried by the eruption of 79 A. D. On the 23rd of 
August in that year, about two o'clock in the afternoon, 
terrible detonations were heard in the mountain, and 



NAPLES — VESUVIUS ~ POMPEII. 355 

shortly afterwards an enormous column of watery vapor 
issued from the top of it, remained suspended for a time 
in the air, then condensed and fell in boiling rain on 
the mountain sides, creating an irresistible torrent of 
mud, which quickly engulfed the city of Herculaneum. 
Following this, later in the evening, apparently about 
dark, came a roaring eruption of red hot pumice stones 
and volcanic dust, succeeded quickly by other showers 
of the same material, which covered Pompeii to the depth 
of fifteen or twenty feet. Thus was the brilliant city, in 
all the exuberance of its gay life, plunged into death in 
a single night. And all the inhabitants of that part of 
Italy believed that they were about to share the same 
dreadful fate. The air was so thick that for many miles 
from the volcano it was almost stifling. It is said to 
have extended as far as Africa. It certainly reached as 
far as Rome, and covered that city with a pall of darkness 
so deep that the people took it for a sign of impending 
doom. They said to each other, "The end of the world 
is come! the sun is going to fall to the earth, or the 
earth mount up and be set on fire by the heavens." 

The most graphic account of the horrors of that awful 
night at Pompeii is to be found in the two letters of the 
younger Pliny to Tacitus. Speaking of his efforts to 
remove his mother out of reach of harm, while she was 
begging him to leave her to perish and save himself, he 
says : "By this time the murky darkness had so increased 
that one might have believed himself abroad in a black 
and moonless night, or in a chamber where all the lights 
had been extinguished. On every hand were heard the 
complaints of women, the wailing of children, and the 
cries of men. One called his father, another his son, 
another his wife, and only by their voices could they know 
each other. Many in their despair begged that death 



3S6 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

would come and end their distress. Some implored the 
gods to succor them, and some believed that this night 
was the last, the eternal night which should engulf the 
universe ! Even so it seemed to me — and I consoled 
myself for the coming death with the reflection. Behold 
the world is passing away!" 

No one saw the sun rise on the morrow. The clouds 
of volcanic matter, still pouring their pitiless rain upon 
the ruins, so darkened the sky that people could not tell 
when the day came. 

And there, under the superincumbent mass of stones 
and dust, the city slept undisturbed till a few years ago, 
with everything as it was in the days of Titus. 'Tt was 
like a clock that stopped when the householder died. 
Meats were on the table and bread was in the oven ; sen- 
tries were in their boxes and dogs on guard at house 
doors." Most of the inhabitants escaped, but it is esti- 
mated, from the skeletons found in the ruins, that not 
less than two thousand lost their lives. In the museum 
by the entrance at the Marine Gate we are shown the 
blackened loaves of bread, recovered from the bakeries, 
the beans and eggs, the chickens and dogs, or their shapes 
from the moulds they left — and, most distressing of all, 
human figures. "Plaster of Paris had been poured into 
the hollows where bones were found, and in all the con- 
tortion of suffocation or convulsion appeared the forms 
of men and women. How little the ones whose brawny 
or whose delicate outlines we gazed upon dreamt that 
they would be their own monuments to-day, and be seen 
by the eyes of other races and ages, eyes curious, but not 
unsympathetic ! It was good to be in the warm sunshine 
again. A cloud of smoke floated like a gray scarf — how 
gracefully and innocently ! — from Vesuvius." 

We walked up the narrow streets, paved with blocks 



NAPLES — VESUVIUS — POMPEII. 357 

of hard lava, deeply rutted by chariot wheels, passing the 
Basilica, the Forum, the Triumphal Arch, the temples, 
the theatres, the baths, the bakeries, and the houses of 
Pansa, Diomedes, and the Tragic Poet — all laid bare 
and clean to the view. We had the good fortune to see 
the process of excavation itself — for while most of the 
city has been disentombed, some of it still remains under 
the layers of small grayish white pumice stones and brown 
dust. Three or four men were shovelling these away 
as we passed. From most of the houses the furniture 
and wall paintings have been taken away to the museums. 
But in the last large residence exhumed, one which has 
only recently been brought to light, nearly everything has 
been left as it was, except for a new roof of mica or some 
such substance, which has been built over it for its pro- 
tection. Nearly all the frescoes are as fresh as on the 
day when they were painted, and the fountain in the 
peristyle and its connecting pipes are so perfectly pre- 
served that, when the water was turned into them by 
the excavators, the fountains began to play as they did 
on that fateful day eighteen hundred years ago. "For 
as in the days that were before the flood they were eating 
and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the 
day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until 
the flood came, and took them all away," so it was with 
the careless dwellers in this opulent city — and so it is 
with the careless dwellers in many an opulent city to-day. 

From Naples we turned our faces homeward, taking 
passage on the Konig Albert, and coming by way of 
Gibraltar and the Azores. We had a delightful ship's 
company, including Dr. Andrew D. White, the accom- 
plished ex-president of Cornell University and our late 
Ambassador to Berlin, whom we found full of illuminat- 



358 A YEAR IN EUROPE. 

ing talk about Fra Paolo Sarpi and other great men and 
great subjects. After a quiet and restful voyage, afford- 
ing a pleasant contrast with our experience of the pre- 
ceding summer when outward bound, we arrived at New 
York on the loth of June, 1903, deeply thankful for all 
the pleasure and benefit the year had brought us, and 
fully convinced that, after all, ours is the best country 
in the world. 



INDEX. 



INDEX. 



Aberfoyle, no. 

Addison, Joseph, funeral of, 

159- 
Alfred the Great, 28, 147, 148, 
Amalfi, 352-354- 
America and England, proposed 

alliance of, 47. 
America's future, English view 

of, so, 51. 
American Revolution, British 

view of, 42-45. 
Amsterdam, islands and canals, 

226. 
built on piles, 227. 
business activities, 227. 
Jewish quarter, 228. ■ 
Aquinas, Thomas, retort to the 

pope, 303. 
Ayr, 136. 

Balfour, Arthur J., Prime Min- 
ister, 59. 
Bibles, in Edinburgh churches, 

Q . go 

Black,' Rev. Hugh, 84. 
Blackie, Prof. Stuart, on Jenny 
Geddes, 91. 
on Oban, 119. 
Blowing Stone of King Alfred, 

148, 149. 
Blue Grotto at Capri, 349. 
Bologna, colonnades, 248. 
leaning towers, 249. 
University, 249. 
Galvani's frog, 249. 
House of the Virgin, 264. 
Booth, General, and Salvation 

Army, 80. 
Buddha canonized by Rome, 

. .295. 
British Government a republic, 

55, 56. 
Burns, Robert, birthplace, 136. 
Burns, Rev. Thos., 84. 
24 



Caledonian Canal, 123. 
Cambridge, 62-67. 
Canterbury Cathedral, 187, 188. 
Carnegie, Andrew, on Ameri- 
ca's future, 50, 51. 
on intemperance, 104, 105. 
Cathedrals in England, original 
significance, 177. 
aesthetic influence, 178. 
Romanizing tendency, 179- 
185. 
Cenci, Beatrice, 300. 
Charles I., "the martyr," 139. 
Charles II., wax effigy of, in 
Westminster Abbey, 170. 
defied by Bishop Ken, 33. 
Chester, 137. 

Church-going in Edinburgh, 88. 
Claverhouse, victory and death 

at Killiecrankie, 133. 
Coblentz, 238. 
Coligni, Admiral, 201-203. 
Cologne, cathedral, 238. 

accident to baggage, 257. 
Commons, House of, 57-61, 
Confession of Faith, 153. 
Confessional, the, in Rome, 309, 

310. 
Crieff, 135. 

Crockett, S. R., author, 109. 
Cromwell, Oliver, portrait at 
Sidney Sussex College, 62. 
slandered by royalists, 174. 
body disinterred and hanged, 

175, 176. 
statue at Westminster, 176. 
Culloden Moor, battle of, 126. 

Davis, Jefferson, name erased 
by Gen. Meigs, 173, 174. 

Delft, 217. 

Dickens, Charles, on the influ- 
ence of Romanism, 312, 
313" 



362 



INDEX. 



Disruption of 1843 in Scotland, 

93- 
Dods, Marcus, D. D., 82, 83. 
Drumtochty, 135. 

Edinburgh and environs, 100. 
slums, loi. 

English Channel, 199. 

English Education Bill, a sec- 
tarian measure, 51-54. 

English lakes, 135. 

English pronunciations, 140, 
141. 

English rural scenery, 23. 

Episcopalians in Virginia, 192, 
193- 

Erasmus, statue of, 218. 

Farrar, Dean, sermon in West- 
minster Abbey, Tj. 
Fingal's Cave, 121, 122. 

Florence, art treasures, 250. 
Savonarola, 251, 252. 

Foxe, Book of Martyrs, 304. 

Geddes, Jenny and her stool, 

91, 92. 
German steamships, 12. 
Gibson, Mrs. Margaret D., 

LL. D., 65, 66. 
Gladstone, on the papacy, 313. 
Glasgow, III. 

cathedral, 115, 116. 
Gray, Rev. Dr. J. Gordon, in 

Rome, 337-340. 

Haarlem, flowers, tulip mania, 

225. 
Hague, The, 218. 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, on Bor- 
ghese Gardens, 320, 321. 
on sensual and spiritual art, 

334, 335- 
on the priests of Rome, 335, 
. 336. 
Heidelberg, 241. 
Henry IV., death of, 157. 
Henry V., tomb of, 271. 
Henry VH.'s Chapel in West- 
minster Abbey, 161. 



Henry VHI. detaches Church 
of England from the pa- 
pacy, 181. 
Henson, Canon, on Anglican 

narrowness, 190-192. 
Holland, wrested from the sea, 
212, 213. 

dykes, canals, wind-mills, 
polders, 213-215. 

scenery, 217. 

art, 219. 

Presbyterian faith and un- 
presbyterian church build- 
ings, 220, 221. 

queer customs, 228, 229. 

cleanliness, 230, 231. 

mother of America, 231-237. 
Huguenots, worshipping in 
Canterbury Cathedral, 187, 
188, 207. 

origin of name, 201. 

massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew, 202. 

other persecutions, 204, 205. 

the world's debt to them, 
205, 206. 

revival in France, 208-210. 

Intemperance in Scotland, 103- 

105. 
Inverness, 124. 
lona, 120. 
Iron Crown of Lombardy, 265- 

269. 

Jerusalem Chamber Westmin- 
ster Abbey, 154-160. 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, opinion 
of London, 40. 
prejudice against Scotland, 

.71- 

visits Flora Maconald, 130. 

house and monument at 
Lichfield, 137. 

buried in Westminster Ab- 
bey, 165. 

Kelvin, Lord, 116, 117. 
Ken, Thomas, 31-33. 
Knox, John, greatest of Scotch- 
men, 80. 



INDEX. 



363 



Knox, John^ — 

comments on the ominous 

advent of Mary Queen of 

Scots. 85. 
Kruger, Oom Paul, at Utrecht, 

228. 
Kuyper, Rev. Dr. A., Prime 

Minister of Holland, 220. 

Lewis, Mrs. Agnes S., LL. D., 

65, 66. 
Leyden, siege, 222. 

University, 223, 224. 

Pilgrim Fathers, 224. 

horse flesh as food, 224, 225. 

interest in an American baby. 

255- 
Lichfield, 137. 

Liguori's Moral Philosophy ap- 
proved by Leo XIIL, 309. 
310. 
Loch Katrine, no. 
Loch Leven, 135. 
Loch Lomond, in. 
Loch Tay, in. 
London, soot, 34, 35. 
brick houses, 36. 
compared with Glasgow and 

Paris, 37-39, 200. 
immensity, 38. 
charm, 39, 40. 
Lucerne, Lake, 243. 

Lion of, 242. 
Luther, monument at Worms, 
241. 
disenthrallment at Rome, 280. 

Macaulay, Lord, on Romanism. 

311, ,^12. 
Macdonald, Flora, statue at In- 
verness, 125. 

saves Prince Charlie, 126- 
128. 

arrested, 128. 

confined in Tower of Lon- 
don, 129. 

marries, 130. 

entertains Dr. Johnson and 
Boswell, 130. 

moves to North Carolina, 
130. 



Macdonald, Flora — 

her husband defeated at 
Moore's Creek, 131. 

returns to Scotland, 132. 
Mai de mer, 11, 199. 
Martyrs of Scotland, 100. 107-9. 
Matheson, Geo., D. D., 82. 83. 
Milan, cathedral, Leonardo's 

great picture, 244. 
Mikon, John, monument in 

Westminster Abbey. 173. 
Miracles, alleged, of Christ's 
portrait, 280, 291. 

Christ's footorints, 286. 

Ghislieri, 298, 299. 

Santissimo Bambino. 276-278. 

St. Anne's bones. 264. 

Sts. Cosmo and Damian, 299. 

St. Dominic, 296. 297. 

St. Giovanni de Matha, 299. 

St. Gregory, 29g. 

St. Januarius' blood, 262. 

St. Martin I., 299. 

St. Paul's head. 284. 285. 

St. Peter's head. 284. 

St. Peter's knees. 283. 

St. Veronica's napkin. 291. 

the Virgin's house, 264. 

the Virgin's image, 300. 

Wafer, 279. 
Monza, Iron Crown of Lom- 

bardy, 265-269. 
Moravian Mission Agency, 

London. 79. 
More, Sir Thos., imprisonment 

and death. 158. 
McNeill, Rev. John, 112. 

Naples, scenery and scenes, 
346-348. 
blood of St. Januarius, 262. 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 159. 

Oban, 119. 

Ocean, a modern highway. 13. 
Overtoun^ garden party. 112. 
Oxford, compared with Cam- 
bridge, 63-65. 

Palissy the Potter, 202, 203. 
Papal mania for building, 324. 



364 



INDEX. 



Paris, beauty of, yj, 38. I99^ 
201. 
custorms in, 200. 
Parker, Joseph, D. D., 78. 
Parliament Houses, London, 56, 

57. 
Pasquinades, 301, 302, 307, 308. 
Penelope's Progress, quoted, 88. 
Perth, 133, 134. 
Pisa, four monuments, 252. 
Pompeii, 354-357- 
Popes, general character of, 

303. 

retort of Thos. Aquinas, 303. 

Pasquinades, 301, 302, 307, 
308. 

Adrian VI., excessive drink- 
ing of, 305. 

Alexander VI., crimes of, 

300, 306. 

Clement VIII. and Beatrice 
Cenci, 300. 

Gregory XIII. and assassina- 
tion of Prince of Orange, 
306. 

Innocent VIII., illegitimate 
children of, 305. 

Innocent X. and Olympia, 

301, 302. 

Joan, woman pope, legend of, 

304. 305. 
John XII., crimes of, 305. 
Leo XIII., appearance, 317- 

approval of Liguori's Moral 
Philosophy, 309. 

audience, 315-318. 

blessing machine, 302, 303. 

last jubilee. 318. 
Paul II., vanity of, 304. 
Paul III., nepotism of, 305. 
Paul V. and assassination of 

Paolo Sarpi, 306. _ 
Pius V. and assassination of 

Queen Elizabeth, 306. 
Pius X., a good man. 314. 
Sixtus IV., enemy of Medici, 

305. 
Urban VIII., self-esteem of. 

Prayers, written, in Presbyte- 
rian churches, 186, 187. 



Presbyterian Church, largest 
Protestant church in the 
world, 114. 
Presbyterian Queen of Hol- 
land, 220. 
Presbyterian services, 183, 184, 

196-198, 220, 221. 
Prestonpans, battle of, 87. 
Prince Charlie, unique prayer 
for, 87. 
victory at Prestonpans, 87. 
defeat at Culloden, 126. 
flight to Hebrides, 126. 
saved by Flora Macdonald, 

127, 128. 
ingratitude, 128. 
burial in St. Peter's Cathe- 
dral, 128. 
Protestantism contrasted with 
Romanism by Macaulay, 
Dickens and Gladstone, 
311-313- 

Queen Elizabeth, wax effigy in 
Westminster Abbey, 170. 

Queen Wilhelmina, 220. 

Quhele, Shoe Heel, Maxton, 
134- 

Relics — 
Abraham's stone, 283. 
Aaron's rod. 279, 281. 
Bambino, Santissimo, 276- 

278. 
Christ's blood, 281. 

communion table, 278. 

cross, 280, 291. 

footprints, 286. 

loaves and fishes, 279. 

pillar, 282, 289. 

protrait, 280, 291. 

sandals, 280. 

seamless coat, 278. 

towel, 279. 
devil's, the, missile against 

St. Dominic, 297. 
John the Baptist's tooth, 

265. 
Maccabees, 286. 
Santa Culla. 273-275. 
Santissimo Bambino, 276-278. 



INDEX. 



365 



Relics — 
Scala Santa, 279, 280. 
St. Andrew's head, 291. 

cross. 286. 
St. Anne's bones, Quebec, 

264. 
St. Dominic's orange tree, 

298. 
St. Edmund's bones, 261. 
St. Januarius' blood, 262. 
St Lawrence's bones, 295, 
296. 
fat, 281. 
St. Longinus' spear, 291. 
St. Mark's bones, 260. 
St. Paul's body, 290. 
head, miraculous springs, 
284. 285. 
St. Peter's body. 290. 
chains, 286-288. 
chair, 290. 
cross, 286. 
head, 278. 
knees, 283. 
spring, 284. 
St. Philomena's bones, 293, 

294. 
St. Stephens's bones, 295, 296. 
St. Thomas' finger, 281. 
St. Veronica's napkin, 291. 
Virgin's hair, 281. 
house, 263. 
milk, 281. 
stone seat. 283. 
veil, 265, 281. 
Rembrandt's "School of Anat- 
omy," 217, 
Renwick, James, martyr, 107. 
Rhine, vintage, 239. 
Robertson, Rev. Alex., quoted, 
246, 261, 276, 280, 302, 303, 
310. 
Roman Catholicism in Italy, 
Dr. Mariano on, 308. 
Macaulay, Dickens and Glad- 
stone on, 31 1-3 1 3. 
(See also Robertson.) 
Rome — 
Appian Way, 341. 
Arrival at night, 253. 



Rome — 
Art, sensual and spiritual, 

334, 335- 
Baths of Caracalla, 323. 
Books on Rome, 343-345. 
Borghese Gardens, 320, 321. 
Building boom, 325, 326. 
Cappucin Cemetery, 328, 329. 
Catacombs, 341, 342. 
Colosseum, 322, 323. 
Deities worshipped, 332. 333. 
Domine Quo Vadis, 286. 
Fees before souls, 334. 
Gray, Rev. Dr. J. Gordon, 

2,27, 340. 
Guide's "Michael," 333. 
Inquisition, 331, 332. 
Janiculum, view from, 321, 

Jesuit Church and the devil, 
307. 

Mamertine Prisons, 284. 

Michael Angelo's "Moses," 
287. 

Morals of clergy, 269, 270, 
310. 335, 3.36. 

Pasquino, 307. 

Piazza Sccssa Cavalli, 282. 

Pincian Hill, 320. 

Pompey, statue. 342. 

Presbyterian Church, 337-'40. 

Priscilla and Aquila, house, 
of. 340. 

Quirinal, 2,22, 337. 

Raphael, 335. _ ^ 

Royalties, visiting, 319, 320. 

Rosary presented to St. 
Dominic by the Virgin, 297. 

St. Peter's Catheral, 289- 
291. 

Tre Fontane, 284, 285. 

Unwashed monks, 329. 

Vatican, 315. 322. 

Villa Doria PamfiH, 302. 

Villa Medici, view from. 321. 

(See also Miracles, Popes, 
Relics, and Roman Catholi- 
cism.) 
Rosaries, introduced by Do- 
minicans, 298. 
Rugby, 143. 



366 



INDEX. 



Sabbath observance in Scot- 
land, I02. 
Salisbury Cathedral, 21, 22. 
Sanquhar Declaration, 109. 
Sarpi, Fra Paolo, 247, 248. 
Savonarola, 251, 252. 
Sayce, Prof. A. H., 84. 
Scotland, character of people, 
80, 81, 102. 

cities solid and stately, 37. 

humor, 113. 

oatmeal, 70, 71. 

public worship, 71-90, 184-5. 

scenery, 68, 69. 

sermon taster, 94. 

weather, 84, 85. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 69. 70, 100. 

on superiority of Presby- 
terian worship, 183, 184. 
Scottish and American repartee, 

96-98. 
Shorter Catechism, 151-156. 
Simon Magus, discomfited by 

St. Peter, 283. 
Si'Hony at Rome, 302. 
Southampton, 16. 
Staffa, 121, 122. 
Stirling, 107, 108. 
Stonehenge, 24, 25. 
Strasburg, clock, 241, 243. 
Stratford-on-Avon, 138. 

American window, 139. 

sing-song of children, 140. 
Stuart kings, buried in St. 

Peter's, 343, 344. 
St. Peter's Cathedral. 289. 
Switzerland, scenery in summer 
and winter, 241, 242. 

Twain, Mark, on relics, 259, 
260. 262, 263. 

on differences between Amer- 
ica and Italy, 329, 330. 

on the Inquisition, 331, 332. 

on the relative rank of the 
deities of Rome, 332, 333. 

Venice, palaces, 245. 

fallen Campanile, 245. 246. 
Church of Jesuits, 246. 
gondolas, 246, 256, 257. 
Fra Paolo Sarpi, 247. 248. 
bones of St. Mark, 260. 



Vesuvius, ascent of, 350-352. 

Victor Emmanuel, liberator of 
Italy, 309. 

Wallace, Sir William, 107. 
Walton, Izaak, 29, 30. 
Watson, Rev. John, D. D. — 

Financial Agent of West- 
minster College, 65. 

Drumtochty Stories, 135. 

Young Barbarians, 142. 
Watts, Isaac, 17-20. 
Westminster Abbey — 

architectural interest, i6o-'i. 

burials, 163, 164. 

coronations, 161, 162. 

decorated for coronation, 152, 

153- 
Edward the Confessor's tomb, 

171. 
Henry VII.'s Chapel, 161. 
Jerusalem Chamber, 1 54-161. 
monuments, 164-167. 
monuments denied to notable 

persons, 172, 173. 
mutilated monuments, 171. 
Poets' Corner, 164. 
royal chapels, 168, 169. 
wax effigies, 169, 170. 
Westminster Assembly of Di- 
vines, 153-155- 
Westminster College, Cam- 
bridge, 64. 
White, Dr. Andrew D., on 
canonization of Buddha, 

295- 
on Fra Paolo Sarpi, 357. 
White Horse Hill, 145-149. 
Wiesbaden, 239, 240. 
Wilson, Margaret, martyr, 107- 

109. 
Winchester, Cathedral', 28-30. 

college, 30, 31. 
Worm's, Luther monument, 241. 

Zanardelli, Prime Minister, on 
the morality of the priests, 
269, 270. 
opposition to the papacy, 309. 
Zola, Emile, on Roman megalo- 
mania, 322-326. 
on the multitude of priests in 
Rome, 326, 327. 



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